


A Soul And A Soul

by flipflop_diva, velociraptorerin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Awesome Carol Danvers, Big Bang Challenge, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Dom Carol Danvers, Dom/sub, Drugging, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Fanart, Illnesses, Infinity Stones, Marvel Femslash Big Bang 2020, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multiple Orgasms, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Orgasm Delay/Denial, POV Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Sub Natasha Romanov, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:21:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25507399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva, https://archiveofourown.org/users/velociraptorerin/pseuds/velociraptorerin
Summary: In a world where not only are most people bonded to a soulmate but to a manner of life (whether dom or sub) once that bond is initiated, Natasha Romanoff has always prided herself on being a neutral. The ideas of soulmates or having to submit to someone are horrifying to her and nothing she has ever wanted. But then the Avengers who are left after Thanos' Snap find a black pager on the streets of New York, dropped there by Nick Fury, and suddenly Natasha's entire world, and everything she thought she knew, is turned upside down. Because not only is this mysterious blonde woman her soulmate, she is also her dom. And Natasha is going to have to find a way to deal with it, whether she likes it or not.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 9
Kudos: 157
Collections: Marvel Femslash Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is our collaboration for the 2020 Femslash Big Bang. [flipflop_diva](https://flipflop-diva.dreamwidth.org/) wrote the fic and [velociraptorerin](https://velociraptorerin-art.tumblr.com) made the art. We hope you enjoy it because we had a great time creating it!

-

Something was wrong, and it wasn’t just because of watching their friends disappear into puffs of ash and not being able to do anything to help. Natasha had felt out of sorts all day, her mind fuzzy, her body weak.

She wasn’t sure what it was. None of the others had mentioned feeling ill, but then again, she hadn’t mentioned it either.

It had started the afternoon after they had all returned home from Wakanda. They had pulled out all the old SHIELD tech they could find, in the hopes of being able to track down Thanos and the stones. But they had found something else instead. A signal that seemed to be extending out into the galaxy.

Rhodey and Rocket had gone to retrieve whatever was emitting the signal (Natasha still couldn’t really wrap her head around a talking raccoon, but she supposed she had seen much stranger things since joining SHIELD). They had come back with a pager.

And that’s when it had first happened. She had been standing next to Steve, waiting for Rhodey and Rocket to disembark from the Quinjet, when a wave of dizziness so intense it almost made her knees buckle passed over her. She probably would have fallen if Steve hadn’t noticed and gripped her arm.

“Nat?” he said, but his voice had sounded like it was coming from far away. “Are you okay?”

She had forced herself to nod at him, to spit out, “I’m fine,” before forcing herself to stand back up straight. But she wasn’t fine at all. She was weak and dizzy, and she felt like her whole body was trying to reach out for something that wasn’t there.

Rhodey and Rocket took the pager into a different room of the compound, and Steve followed them. Natasha stood alone, taking in as deep of breaths as she could, until the feeling passed, and then she too went to join them.

But whatever it was wasn’t done with her yet. It came on in waves, weakness and dizziness swooping over her, her whole body aching, her head feeling almost numb, like she couldn’t really focus on a single thought. She couldn’t understand what was happening, but she didn’t like it.

She also refused to give in to whatever it was. She was not going to stay in her room or in her bed, not when the whole world needed her — needed them — to be able to do something. 

But after two days, the sickness was growing worse. She was once again standing next to Steve, behind Rhodey, as he fiddled with wires connected to the pager they had found on the streets of New York. Fury’s pager, they had finally realized once they looked closer at it. But who — or what — Fury was summoning they still didn’t know.

Rhodey, though, thought he had something, a way to keep the pager on and the signal transmitting. If there was someone — or something — on the other side, they were going to find it.

She had just leaned over to fix one of the connection wires when yet another wave of dizziness, this one stronger than even the previous strongest ones had been, passed over her. She felt herself falling and struggled to hold on, but there was nothing she could do.

Her eyes blinked open to find herself lying on a couch in the common room, Steve leaning over her with worried eyes. She could see Bruce, Rhodey, Thor and Rocket behind him.

She struggled to sit up, shame surging through her at the thought of passing out over something so stupid, but Steve’s hand on her shoulder pushed her back into the cushions.

Someone — Bruce, she thought — handed something to Steve, and then a thermometer was popped into her mouth. She half glared at Steve for the humiliation of this whole ordeal, but she felt much too awful to put her full effort into it.

Steve took it out of her mouth and examined it. “No fever,” he said. “Completely normal, in fact.”

He looked at her. “Are you having any other symptoms?”

She wanted to say no, to tell them she was utterly and completely fine, but she was so tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally. And she had a feeling Steve wouldn’t believe her even if she tried to convince him otherwise.

She tried to think how to answer him, but her brain was once again feeling like it just couldn’t get the words out. “Dizzy. Weak,” she finally managed. “Fuzzy.”

“Fuzzy?” Was it her imagination or did Steve look shocked at that?

She managed to nod. “Fuzzy. Like it’s hard to think.”

Steve looked like he’d had an epiphany of sorts. “And, um, do you feel maybe like you’re craving something? Someone?”

“Craving?” Natasha repeated. She tried to think. Is that what she was feeling, this weird need that was nestling in the pit of her stomach, drawing her to something she didn’t understand? “I guess? I think so. I don’t know.” It wasn’t an answer, but she saw Steve’s expression change, just a little. Or at least she thought. Her mind was still so fuzzy, though, she couldn’t understand what it meant. “Why? Does that mean something?”

“It could,” Steve said. “It’s not always common, but sometimes it happens this way.”

“What happens?” Natasha said. Her head was beginning to pound now — which was just what she needed — and she still couldn’t begin to understand what Steve was talking about.

“Reactions to meeting your soulmate,” Steve said. 

Natasha tried to focus. “What?”

“Sometimes, when you’re getting close to meeting your soulmate, your body begins to react physically,” Steve said slowly. She saw him look toward Bruce for help.

“Soulmate?” Natasha echoed. None of this was making sense. She didn’t have a soulmate.

“Bucky had these symptoms before we were finally … together,” Steve said.

“Yes,” Bruce jumped in. “I had some of them too. Before I knew it was Betty.”

Natasha shook her head. “That’s impossible,” she said. “I don’t have a soulmate.”

“Almost everyone has a soulmate,” Steve said.

“No, the Red Room …” Natasha tried to explain. The Red Room didn’t want girls with soulmates, so they had created a way to sever the connection. Wipes, recalibrations, whatever you wanted to call it. She still remembered hearing some of the girls’ screams, echoing out into the halls while the rest of them practiced ballet or practiced their fighting techniques.

But the scientists had performed the tests on her, repeatedly, every year of her life that she was with them, and they could never find that connection.

“There is no one in this world who is her soulmate.” Natasha remembered one of the scientists saying that to Madam B. on her twelfth birthday. She had been lying on an exam table, still hooked up to an array of machines, while the man looked over something on a computer screen.

“Are you sure?” Madam B. had said, in the same tone she used when she thought one of the girls was trying to deceive her. 

“We’ve tested her countless times,” the man said. “If she has a soulmate, they are not of this earth. And that, frankly, is impossible. Soulmates are human connections. And aliens? That’s a fairy tale.”

“Fine,” Madam B had said. “Then we won’t need to worry about this one.”

The man had returned to Natasha, pulling the wires off of her body. “You can go,” he’d said, and she still remembered the rush of relief she had felt upon realizing that her forever single status ensured that she wouldn’t have to undergo those same experiments that the other girls did. 

So Steve was wrong. He had to be wrong.

He was still watching her, though, as she struggled for words.

“They said I don’t,” she finally spit out. It was the most she could explain.

“Well, we’re not saying that’s what this is one hundred percent,” Steve replied, and she noticed his voice had changed again, to something gentler, kinder, like she was a child who needed to be taken care of. “Just that this is when I’ve seen the symptoms before.”

“With soulmates,” Natasha said. She started to shake her head, but it hurt too much. “Yeah, it has to be something different.” But something else tugged at her mind, something Steve hadn’t said. Bucky had symptoms, Bruce had symptoms …

“All soulmates get symptoms?” Natasha asked. 

There was a very long pause before Steve finally answered. “No, Nat,” he said softly. “Just the sub half.”

\--

Natasha had never understood soulmates, not even before she knew the Red Room tried to break the connection of any girl who might have one. Another person who you were fated to be with, even if you didn’t want to be, and more than that, as soon as the soulmate bond was activated, so were the dom and sub sides.

That, Natasha really didn’t understand. One person fated to be in charge, to lead the way, to have full command. The other to do exactly what their dom wanted at all time. No free will.

“It’s not like that, Natasha.” Steve had tried to explain it to her back in the early days of their partnership, but that was exactly what it had sounded like to Natasha. She had seen doms and subs together, seen the way the subs craved their doms, their love, their attention, their touch.

It was disgusting, humiliating.

Very few people in the world were born neutral, but Natasha had been grateful every day that she was one of them.

Except now, Steve and Bruce and even Thor and Rhodey and Rocket were telling her she wasn’t neutral after all. That she had a soulmate and, worse yet, that _she_ was the sub. That she was the one who was meant to be controlled, the one who would need someone when she had never needed anyone before in her life, the one who would want to obey even when every instinct she had fought against that, the one who would want to submit to someone when the very idea of it made her want to throw up.

The entire thought brought a sharp stinging to the back of her eyes. They had to be wrong. They had to be.

\--

Natasha didn’t get better. She pretended she did, but she had a feeling she was fooling no one. The dizzy spells were coming more and more frequently. The fuzzy feeling in her head was increasing. Sometimes it was all she could do to get a sentence or more out. She felt like she was constantly on the verge of collapse, and she found herself, despite every ounce of her willpower, wishing someone would just take her into their arms and hold her until this awful feeling went away.

But worst of all, they had made a discovery of sorts. The feelings got worse the closer she got to the pager Rhodey had found, and even though no one could really explain how, there was only one thing that made sense: whoever or whatever her soulmate was, was on the other end of that signal, and they were getting closer to coming.

She was once again with Steve, this time sitting because she wasn’t sure if she could remain standing for more than a few minutes at a time, when Rhodey poked his head out of the room where the pager had been set up.

“Bad news, guys,” he said.

Steve turned away from the lists of the missing that were flashing across screens in the room he and Nat were in to look at Rhodey. “What?”

“The signal on the pager went out, and we can’t get it back on.”

Natasha turned to look at him sharply. She could feel the anger inside her, anger that seemed to be there for no reason, except the idea of having to feel like this for even a minute longer was beyond imaginable. She was going to go crazy if the person on the other side didn’t appear or if Bruce or someone else didn’t find another way to cure her. 

“Well, plug it back in and reboot it!” she almost snarled.

Steve flashed her a look, one she knew to say “Cool it,” but before she could snap at him too, Rhodey answered. “It is plugged in. It just went dead.”

“I thought you said that couldn’t happen?” she snapped, and she knew her voice was more accusatory than she normally ever would be.

“I thought so too. Come look for yourselves.” He shot Natasha a look, not of anger and annoyance like she would have if someone was rude to her for no reason, but more one of empathy and pity. It made her want to throw things. Or punch the person on the other side of that pager in the face.

Rhodey turned around to head back to the pager, gesturing for them to follow him. Steve grabbed Natasha’s arm and helped hoist her out of her chair. Since Steve was a dom, his warm fingers gripping her so tightly helped a touch, a little bit of warmth spreading throughout her body, easing a bit of the fuzziness in her brain. He pulled her into the other room after Rhodey. They stopped behind Rhodey’s chair as he and Bruce tapped on the pager and tried to figure out what went wrong.

Natasha stared at the now dead little device.

“You have to get it back online,” she said, and she cringed at how desperate she sounded. “I need to know what or who is on the other end of this thing. And I need to know now! I can’t do this anymore!”

She whirled around, yanking her arm out of Steve’s grip, adrenaline and fury and frustration and maybe fear spreading through her entire being, but she had barely taken more than a step when she stumbled to a halt. She felt Steve, and Bruce and Rhodey, all behind her, turn too.

In front of her was a woman she had never seen before. She had long curly blonde hair and was dressed in a stealth bodysuit of red, blue and gold. She was glaring at all of them, like she was somehow the one who had been wronged in this situation, instead of her appearing in the middle of their completely locked and secure compound and being completely uninvited and unwanted.

Natasha gaped at her, and the woman’s eyes seemed to focus in on her own. The two of them stared at each other, and it felt to Natasha like she had stopped breathing. 

For what could have been an hour or maybe just a half second, the world and time all seemed to stop. Everything else faded away, until it was just Natasha and the blonde woman. 

Natasha stared at this woman she didn’t know but who she suddenly felt such an affinity for, and then a feeling of warmth surged through her entire body, so strong and so sudden and so complete, she felt like she was on fire. The room started to spin, and somewhere beside her, she heard a voice — probably Steve — ask, “Who are you?” And then, just before the world faded into blackness, she heard the woman speak. 

“Where’s Fury?”


	2. Chapter Two

When Natasha blinked awake, she was in a dark, cool room, lying on something soft. It took her far longer than it should have to realize Steve was next to her, and that she was in one of the mostly empty rooms in the compound that had once been reserved for visiting agents but was now mostly bare since there was no one left to stop by. 

She tried to take stock of the situation. She felt like she had developed a horrible fever instantaneously. Her skin burned, but her body shook with chills. She felt like the fog in her head had returned but was now ten times worse, and she felt like she wanted to throw up or pass back out, but she didn’t know which she wanted more.

She tried to remember what had happened and how she had gotten here, but it was like the connections in her brain were no longer working.

“Shhhhh.” Steve was holding something to her head. Something cool and a little wet. “Shhhhh,” he said again, and it took her another moment to realize she was moaning.

Steve’s free hand came up to wrap around her arm and squeeze gently, and the strength of his grip lifted the fog just a bit for her to remember. The dead pager. The blonde woman. The overwhelming sensations.

“Hold on for one second,” Steve said into her ear. “We have something to help you.”

He let go of her arm, and she saw him get up from beside her bed, taking the cool cloth with him. It was like a door had slammed directly on her. The fog was back, full force, and she wanted to cry. Everything hurt, so much worse than it had ever hurt before. Everything ached. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t concentrate.

And then something touched her hand. Something soft and cool, and like nothing she had ever felt before. 

Natasha blinked. Almost instantly, the horrible symptoms and the awful feelings began to subside. Her headache dissipated, her body felt cooler, she felt like she could focus.

She looked up and met the eyes of the blonde woman she had seen downstairs before she passed out. Her eyes dropped a little more to where she could see the blonde woman’s fingers wrapped around her wrist.

She was who had come to answer Fury’s call. The one Steve, Rhodey and Bruce thought was her soulmate. The one who was supposed to be her dom.

Natasha yanked her arm out of the woman’s grasp, but the woman didn’t look upset. She just turned her head to look at Steve, who was off to the side. Her face was entirely unreadable.

“Natasha,” Steve said, and he waited until she moved her eyes to meet his. “This is Carol. Fury was trying to reach her before he vanished.”

“Why?” she asked Steve, not the woman, even though she was right there. Her mind felt clearer than it had in days, but she didn’t want to think about the implications of that and about why that was.

“Probably because I can help,” the woman — Carol — said, and shrugged.

Natasha turned to look at her, even though she didn’t want to. “You can help?” she said, and almost sneered. “You can fight Thanos and get back the stones and snap everyone back?”

Carol shrugged again. “Probably.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Right.” 

“I’m very strong,” Carol said.

“So are a lot of people,” Natasha said. “And if you’re so great, where were you?”

“You all do know there is a huge universe out there with a lot of planets and a lot of creatures that aren’t just you, right? And not all of them have the Avengers to save them.” She shook her head. “I can’t keep track of every threat to existence. But when Fury called, I answered.”

“Took you long enough,” Natasha muttered, but her head was spinning. This woman knew who the Avengers were then. 

She eyed her more carefully now. She looked human. But that didn’t always mean anything, she had come to learn.

“Are you human?” she asked her.

“I was.”

“Was?”

“Am.” Carol shrugged. It seemed to be her go-to gesture. Natasha was already annoyed. “I might have gotten powers from the space stone, which makes me a lot more than human. But I was human to begin with.”

“You got powers from the space stone?”

“Yes.”

“As in the space stone that was one of the Infinity Stones?”

“Yes, that one.”

“How is that possible?”

“I’ve never analyzed the mechanics of the situation. But I assure you, it happened. Maybe the lasers that I can shoot out my eyes or the fact that I can fly will convince you.”

“You can shoot lasers … out of your eyes? And fly?” Natasha looked at her, half in disbelief, half in amazement. Who was this woman who she supposedly was connected to?

“Yes,” Carol said again, like it was all that simple.

“That’s why you think you can beat him? Thanos?”

“I don’t know him,” Carol said. “But I can break apart a spaceship with my eyes so I figure I have a chance. Now.” Carol turned to Steve. “If we’re done here?”

Steve almost blanched. “Done here? You two are soulmates. You’re supposed to be together.”

“I don’t think so,” Carol said.

“I don’t think you get a choice,” Steve said.

“Yeah, I do,” Carol said. “And we’re not doing this.” Then she turned around and left the room.

\--

Natasha spent the next two days avoiding Carol. She told herself it was because she agreed completely with everything Carol had said to Steve — they hadn’t needed each other for this long so they didn’t need each other moving forward.

But in truth, it was so much more than that, and Natasha couldn’t figure out how to deal with it, so she was resorting to her usual method, which was to hide away from everyone until she could figure out how to deal with the situation on her own. She needed a plan, and until then, she’d rather spend time down in the gym trying to punch things than figure out what it really was that she wanted.

Because it didn’t make sense. She _didn’t_ want a soulmate. She had never wanted one, never even entertained the idea of wanting one. And she most definitely did not want to be a sub in this situation. Even when she’d gone undercover as half of a soulmate team, she had been the dom. That had always felt right. Being in charge, having the power, the control. She always knew what to do and how to do it. How could she let someone, anyone, take that away from her? Especially some woman who dropped in from space and could apparently shoot lasers out of her eyes and take down a spaceship and fly from the earth to Asgard in less time than it would take Natasha to fly the Quinjet across the ocean to London.

Being a sub, letting someone else control her, letting someone else use their voice and their hands to manipulate her — no, no, no. That is what the Red Room had done to her for far too many years, and she had vowed when she broke away that she would never let anyone have that much control over her again. She wasn’t going to just let this woman do that to her now. There was no way.

But the problem was her body seemed to have different ideas than she did. 

She’d thought since she had seen Carol, since they had touched, that everything would just go away, go back to normal — the dizziness would disappear, the fuzziness, the chills, the fever — but instead it just seemed to get worse. Her body craved her, wanted to be near her, while her mind fought with itself.

She could only take sparring for maybe ten minutes before she was curled up on the floor mat almost crying. Sometimes she could barely make it out of bed. She stopped eating because every time she did, she ended up throwing it right back up.

It was like an illness that could only end if she let herself be demeaned, and she hated it, hated herself, hated everything.

At one point she found herself downstairs with Bruce begging him to help her.

“Please,” she said, almost on the verge of tears, her entire body shaking from the effort of staying standing. “There has to be something you can do. SHIELD had to have a way to break the connection. The Red Room did.”

Bruce looked at her sympathetically. “Are you sure they broke the connection, Natasha, and didn’t just have the other half killed?”

She stared at him. The screams from the past echoed in her head.

“No,” she said. “They broke the connection.”

“I’ve never known of anything that can do that besides death.”

“I’m not going to kill Carol,” she said sulkily.

A small smile crossed Bruce’s lips. “I was definitely not telling you too.”

“Isn’t there something that can help the symptoms?”

“Yes.”

“There is?” Natasha felt a small burst of hope bloom in her chest. Finally, some good news, although she wasn’t sure why no one had said anything to her before now.

“It’s called go be with Carol. She’s right out there.”

The hope died. She glared at him as hard as she could. “I can’t.”

“It’s the only thing that will help, Nat.”

She refused to believe that. “No,” she insisted. “There has to be another way, and I need to find it.”

\--

Her head was pounding and her throat was dry and she felt like she might pass out by the time she made her way to Carol, who she found sitting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee, and staring aimlessly out the window.

She looked over at Natasha when she appeared, and her eyes followed her as she made her way across the kitchen, trying hard not to stagger, and took a seat across from her at the table.

“You look like hell,” Carol commented.

Natasha glared. “That is _your_ fault.”

“No.” Carol shook her head and went back to her coffee. “I want no part in this.”

“And you think I do?” Natasha managed to force the words out between gritted teeth. Now that she was sitting, and was in close proximity to Carol, the symptoms were subsiding. Her head was pounding less and her mind felt more focused. “I thought I was neutral,” she said softly.

Carol turned back to her. This time she looked almost a little sympathetic. “Me too,” she said. “There was never any indication, and then after.” She gestured to herself. “This, I just figured I was one of the lucky ones not bound to anyone.”

She shrugged, even as her eyes traveled over Natasha’s whole body, and Natasha wanted to crawl under the table and hide, but she didn’t. She kept looking at Carol, forcing herself to remain upright.

Finally, Carol sighed and reached out a hand, letting her fingers drape over Natasha’s wrist.

Natasha almost pulled her hand away, but she couldn’t. She felt frozen in place as a warmth, like nothing else she had ever known, swept through her body. She could feel the fog vanishing, the dizziness clearing and her energy returning.

Finally, she did yank her hand away.

“Thanks,” she muttered, and she felt her cheeks grow warmer than they had under Carol’s touch. Especially since she knew Carol was still staring at her. She stared down at the table in front of her to avoid seeing her expression.

It was quiet for a few minutes, but finally Carol spoke, and she sounded almost resigned. “I don’t want this,” she said quietly. “This has never been anything I’ve ever wanted, even before the space stone. But Bruce and Steve explained the connection. And I don’t want you to suffer. I would never … I wouldn’t just let you suffer.”

“It’s not your fault I’m like this,” Natasha said to the table.

“I mean, it sort of is.” 

Natasha finally looked up to meet her eyes. Carol shrugged, but she was smiling just a little.

“Okay,” Natasha said. “It is a little your fault.” She took in a deep breath. “What if we could fix it?”

“Fix what?”

“This situation.” Natasha waved her hand around. “Fix us. Break the connection so we don’t need each other.”

“Is that a thing that can be done?”

Natasha shrugged. “Where I was trained, they thought it was. They broke connections all the time.” 

_“Are you sure they broke the connection, Natasha, and didn’t just have the other half killed?”_

Natasha shook her head, trying to get Bruce’s words out of her head.

“Do you know how?” Carol was asking.

“No.”

“Okay, well, we’re two very smart women. We can figure it out.”

Natasha smiled at that, and for the first time since this had started, she felt a little bit better. Maybe there was a way out. There had to be a way out. And Carol would help her find it. After all, she didn’t want this any more than Natasha did.

“But in the meantime,” Carol said, “if you start to feel ill, just come to me. I want to help. I really do.”

“I can’t ask you to …”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering. Besides, it’s just touching your hand. It’s nothing more than that.”

\--

“It’s a lot more than a touch on your hand,” Bruce said quietly. It was late. Everyone else had drifted off to sleep one by one. They weren’t much for late nights and social gatherings these days anyway. But Bruce hadn’t left, and Natasha hadn’t either. Bruce was a sub, and she needed to understand it more so she could break it.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s biological, Natasha. Once you get close to your soulmate, in whatever way that happens, and the connection forms, you begin to need your partner. Not just to touch you but to help you. Sub drop is a very real thing.”

Natasha looked at him, thinking. Of course it was. She had always known that. She’d seen a lot of situations, especially when missions went wrong, where a dom had to lead their sub away to make sure they were okay. She’d always likened the sub to having a panic attack of sorts, but that was for needy, dependent people. People that weren’t like her.

“I’m not going to fall apart if Carol doesn’t dom me,” she said, and then she made a face. The thought itself was horrifying.

“Not right away,” Bruce said.

“Not _ever_.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Nat.”

“You’ve been away from Betty forever, and you’re not having sub drops,” she pointed out.

“No,” he said, “but it took us years to get to this point.”

“Then we’ll just have to get to that point right away.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“So you keep saying.”

“And you keep not listening.”

Natasha didn’t answer. She didn’t want to admit the truth. It wasn’t that she wasn’t listening; she _was_ listening. She was listening to every word, trying to solve it like a problem she could crack. Because the problem was that she was terrified. She didn’t _know_ Carol. She didn’t know anything about her. To just give her that trust and that power because the universe decided they should be bonded? No, just no. She couldn’t accept that. She wouldn’t accept it. There had to be another way. There _had_ to be.

\--

They had other things to focus on in the meantime. Bruce had finally agreed to possibly, maybe help her and Carol with their soulmate connection problem once the more urgent issues of killing Thanos and bringing their friends, and the rest of the universe, back were solved. They still had all the SHIELD tech they had accumulated when they were hunting down the pager and Carol. If there was anything to break a soulmate connection, it had to be in there, Natasha was sure of it.

Steve had looked at her disapprovingly when she had mentioned it to him as a casual aside. She knew he would. But she also knew he didn’t understand. He and Bucky were one of the lucky ones. Their love was strong and real and lasting. They had known each other forever, and survived horrible things together. And Natasha knew how much Bucky’s vanishing from existence was hurting Steve now.

There was no way Steve was going to understand purposely wanting to break your soulmate connection, but even though he had looked at her like she was making the wrong choice, he had promised her he’d help too if he could.

He was already helping in other ways. For as much as Carol said Natasha could come to her if she needed her, Natasha just couldn’t make herself do that, even if that in itself was a battle of wills, her heart versus her mind.

She had tried it twice, letting Carol touch her, but both times she hadn’t lasted more than a minute before she had hurriedly excused herself and retreated as far away as she could. The problem wasn’t that she didn’t like it; the problem was that she did. There was something about the feeling when Carol touched her, about letting go in that moment and giving in to Carol’s touch, and Natasha knew if she let it that it could consume her. She could understand how subs were addicted to their doms, how they could be so needy. She could see it happening, and she hated it, more than she had ever hated anything. She could not be that person; she could not give Carol that power.

She still didn’t know her (“You could get to know her, Nat,” Bruce had pointed out, but that meant being close to her, letting her touch her, letting her in, and that was just asking for problems), and she definitely didn’t trust her. (“Fury trusted her,” Steve pointed out one night. “Fury never mentioned her. Ever,” Natasha had replied. “How well did he trust her?” “Maybe it wasn’t me he didn’t trust,” Carol had said. Natasha hadn’t even known she’d been listening, and there it was. Further proof she couldn’t be trusted.)

But for whatever he thought about what Natasha was doing (and how wrong and how stubborn he probably thought she was being), Steve would never make her do something she was uncomfortable doing, and he would never let her hurt if he could help make her feel better.

So she had started turning to Steve, letting Steve touch her when she was feeling out of sorts, sometimes even sneaking into his room in the middle of the night and curling up by his side. His body heat, the sense of safety he gave off, calmed her mind enough, eased the pains enough, that she could sleep, and he always stayed next to her until she was awake and alert.

But Natasha should have known that she couldn’t use Steve to heal herself forever and that at some point her luck would run out. It just came in a bit of a different way than she had expected.

A week after Carol arrived, they got a break. Natasha was once more sitting with Steve in front of the screens monitoring the activities of the world. Every once in a while, he would reach over and put his fingers over her hand or her wrist or on her leg, keeping her balanced and letting her know he cared.

They had been watching the same newscasts for hours, though there was absolutely nothing going on that could help them in any way, when Bruce came rushing into the room.

“I found something!”

Natasha and Steve jumped to their feet. “Thanos?” they asked in unison.

“Better,” Bruce said, and Natasha frowned at him. “I think I’ve found Tony!”

“What?”

They hurried after Bruce, back into the control room, where the screens were now focused on a planet that Natasha had never heard of. Bruce pointed to a little blip on the screen that was blinking off in the vicinity of it.

“I’ve been trying to track the heat index of his suit,” Bruce told them. “In case there was any chance that he might have made it. And today.” Bruce tapped on the little blip. “I found this.”

“You think that’s Tony?” Steve said.

“I think there’s a very good chance.”

“But why would they be all the way out there?” Natasha asked, then frowned. “Where ever there is.”

“Yeah, that’s the bad part,” Bruce said. “I think he might be stuck, and if my measurements are right, then he’s quickly running out of air.”

“So let me get this straight,” Steve said, and there was an edge to his voice Natasha very rarely heard. “We might have found Tony, but there’s no way to know for sure, and he’s millions of miles away and no one way to get to him, but if we don’t get to him, he might die?”

“Well,” Bruce started, but a voice interrupted.

“I wouldn’t say no way.”

Natasha and Steve spun around. It was almost like déjà vu for Natasha — turning around to see Carol there, changing her world forever.

“I can get him,” Carol said. “I can bring him back.”

“Okay,” Steve said, without hesitation.

“Just like that?” Natasha said, and she sounded angrier than she felt.

“Yeah,” Carol said, and shot her a look. “Just like that.”

She moved closer to Bruce, brushing against Natasha with her shoulder. Natasha gasped as that incredible feeling of warmth spread through her body, and she had to press her hands into fists to keep herself from grabbing hold of Carol, now just an inch in front of her.

Bruce was showing Carol the coordinates and the planet Tony was near.

“Got it,” she said. “I should be back in about twelve hours.” And then just like that, she was gone.

“I’ll call Pepper,” Bruce said.

Natasha sank to the ground.

“Nat?” Steve was talking to her, his voice sounding far away. She felt different than she’d felt before, like she was underwater and someone had fiddled with her breathing tube. She was finding it hard to take in air, and the whole world had an unreal feeling about it, like she was somehow separated from it. 

She tried to move, to stand up, but instead of doing so, she toppled over on to the carpet, curled up on the floor.

She felt cold, so cold. So lost.

“Nat! Nat!” She could hear Steve calling her, but she couldn’t answer.

“Shit,” she heard Bruce say. “Carol left the universe, and they haven’t fully bonded yet. That’s …”

“Not supposed to happen?” Steve asked.

“I’ve heard of soulmates being in pain when their other half leaves the city before their bond is complete,” Bruce said. “Let alone the universe.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “Let’s get her to bed. Maybe we can give her something?”

“I have some morphine. If we let her sleep …”

Natasha wanted to say no, that she would be okay, that she could focus, that Carol dashing off to save their _friend_ was not going to do her in — that _Carol_ was not going to do her in — but she couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t move, she could barely think and she still felt like she could barely breathe.

Strong, warm hands slipped beneath her and lifted her up, and Natasha wanted to cry. She felt like she was shivering now, but Steve was so warm, and her breath had loosened a little.

“It’s okay, Nat. It’s okay.” Steve was whispering in her ear, stroking her hair and her cheeks and her arms, and Natasha realized in horror that she _was_ crying. Sobbing practically, with no way to stop

She wasn’t sure how far they took her or how long Steve held her or where they even put her down, but at some point, she knew she was lying on something soft —probably a bed — and Steve was holding both her hands in his, and Bruce had a needle in his hand and was leaning over her.

She wanted to say no, to tell them to stop. Her mind raced as she remembered too many times in her past when someone had injected her with something she couldn’t control, and she wanted to scream.

This was all Carol’s fault. For being her stupid soulmate. For being her dom. For not helping her break this connection. For leaving without thinking about her, even if she had said she didn’t want to hurt her.

But she was hurting and she was panicking and she was miserable and maybe she was dying. And then there was a soft prick, maybe in her arm, and everything faded.

\--

Natasha had no idea how long she had been out when she started to seep back into consciousness. She left her eyes closed as she tried to remember what had happened and where she was and how she felt.

She remembered Bruce finding Tony, and then Carol leaving, and then falling to the floor. She remembered Steve carrying her and Bruce injecting her and then nothing.

She concentrated now.

She wasn’t hurting anymore. In fact, she felt more okay than she had in a long time. Nothing ached. Not her muscles or her head. She could think clearly, remember images, focus on thoughts. She felt warm and not cold, like she had when she had fallen to the floor.

She felt peaceful almost. Happy.

She was still lying on something soft. She was on her side, her head on a pillow of sorts, and something was draped over her. Probably a blanket.

And, oh. There were fingers in her hair, stroking her head like she was a puppy. Almost like a massage. And another hand was resting on her hip, a steadying force.

Steve maybe. Probably.

Natasha opened her eyes. Then sat up in a panic, horror spreading through her.

Not Steve. Carol. She had been lying on Carol’s lap, on a pillow that was still there now, and Carol had been stroking her hair, had been grounding her, had been taking away the pain.

Natasha stared at her as Carol stared back, her face again completely devoid of all emotion. Natasha felt once more like she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

She looked around her, panic consuming her. She needed to run, to get out of here, but she couldn’t make her body do anything she wanted.

Carol’s hands were on her shoulders now, and she kept moving her face, getting in Natasha’s line of sight, even as Natasha tried to pull away, to see around her or over her or anywhere she wasn’t.

Where was Steve? Where was Bruce? Or someone else, someone who could help her? 

Her breathing was getting worse. Her whole body was cramping. What if Carol had done something to her? What if her leaving the universe had done something to their bond and that had done something to her? What if this was how she was always going to feel?

Her eyes were darting around the room, looking for an escape. Her lungs had stopped expanding.

She was going to die. She was going to suffocate to death. All because of a ridiculous soulmate connection she never wanted in the first place.

She had survived the Red Room, she had survived Hydra and Ultron and Thanos’ Snap, but this was going to kill her. She might have found it a little funny if she could breathe.

There was something hot on her face. Natasha thought she was crying again, but she wasn’t sure. She thought she might be shaking too, but Carol wouldn’t let go of her, wouldn’t stop trying to move her face in front of hers.

“Natasha!” she finally spoke, loud and commanding and stern. “Look. At. Me.”

There was no disobeying her when she spoke like that. Every sub instinct that Natasha hadn’t known she had seemed to be activated, by the tone of voice and her words. She stopped looking around, focused on Carol’s blue eyes staring back into hers.

Carol’s hands were still on her shoulders.

“Do as I do,” Carol commanded, and Natasha didn’t know if she could disobey even if she wanted to. “Breathe with me. Exactly as I do.”

Carol took a deep breath. Natasha took one too. She felt like she didn’t have a choice, not with Carol’s eyes boring into her own, not with Carol’s fingers wrapped around her shoulders. 

Carol let all the air out in a long gush. Natasha did the same. Carol took in another deep breath. So did Natasha. 

On and on it went. Carol breathing deeply, and Natasha mimicking her actions. 

She felt calmer. Warmer. Like she could breathe again. And then she realized, and heat flooded her cheeks, and she wished she had a time machine and could re-do the last few minutes completely. She wasn’t sure why she was always humiliating herself in front of Carol.

“I had a panic attack,” she finally said, when she found she could speak again. Carol nodded. 

“That’s embarrassing,” Natasha said. She wondered if their connection had brought that on too. She had never had one before.

Carol didn’t look bothered. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” she told her, as she shrugged. “It happens.”

“To you?”

“I’ve not always been a super powered weirdo, you know.”

Natasha shook her head. “Actually,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Carol looked at her thoughtfully. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For leaving. I didn’t think …”

“Wait!” Natasha interrupted her. “Tony?”

“He’s fine,” Carol said. “I got him. He was with someone else. Nebula. They’re both okay. Getting checked out.”

“He’s fine?” Natasha repeated. “He’s alive?”

“He’s fine and he’s alive,” Carol confirmed.

Natasha let out another breath, and felt her eyes well up with tears. Finally, something good had happened since it all went wrong.

“Thank you for saving him,” she told Carol. 

“I wasn’t going to not save him.”

“And for saving me,” she added.

“I think we need to figure this whole thing out a little more,” Carol said. “We don’t have to like it. Or even like each other. But other people have managed to get it to work, so maybe we can too.”

“Yeah,” Natasha said. Without everything hurting, she was feeling more agreeable. But now that Tony was safe, she was also feeling more tired.

Carol noticed. “Why don’t you get some rest?” she suggested. “And when you wake up, maybe we can talk. Really talk.”

Natasha yawned. “I’d like that,” she said.

She looked around, trying to figure out where they were. In one of the empty rooms, she realized. The one where Carol has been staying. 

She thought about standing up, maybe going back to her own room to sleep, but Carol’s arm was around her, her fingers warm and soothing on her shoulders, and she was tugging her downward, back to the pillow on her lap. 

Natasha was so tired, and Carol was so warm, and they needed to talk anyway, so what did it hurt?

Nothing, she supposed, as she laid her head back on the pillow, closing her eyes, and letting the feel of Carol’s fingers in her hair ease her to sleep.

\--

Natasha wasn’t sure how long she slept, but when she opened her eyes, the room was dark, only the hint of moonlight peeking through the window keeping everything from being completely cloaked in blackness.

She twisted around. She felt strangely awake, like she had finally gotten a full night’s sleep. She was still lying with her head in Carol’s lap, and Carol, she saw, was reading something on her tablet.

She dropped it down beside her as Natasha moved.

“Hey,” Carol said, and her voice was softer and more soothing than Natasha had heard it before. It seemed to flow through her whole body and calm her, even when she didn’t need it.

Natasha felt her cheeks grow warm at the realization, and she was glad it was dark. She wasn’t sure she wanted Carol to see her like this, to know the power she could wield over her if she tried. 

She sat up, not moving away from Carol but her head not in her lap anymore.

“How are you feeling?” Carol asked.

Natasha decided it was better to tell her the truth. She wasn’t sure if Carol would be able to know if she was lying, but how could they break a connection if one side wasn’t truthful?

“Better than I have in a long time,” she said. “Since before …” She didn’t say his name.

“I am sorry for leaving,” Carol said. “I didn’t think.”

“Did you know?” Natasha asked. “That it would do that to me?”

Carol didn’t answer.

“You did,” Natasha said. A wave of hurt she didn’t understand crashed over her. Disappointment. Maybe shame.

“Yes,” Carol said. “Not to the extent it was,” she added quickly. “But I’ve seen soulmates be separated before they are ready, and it hasn’t always been pretty.”

“But you weren’t thinking of me when you left,” Natasha said.

“No.”

“Because I don’t matter to you.”

“I thought I didn’t matter to you,” Carol said. “I thought it was a mutual didn’t matter.”

“Maybe you have more choice in it than I do,” Natasha said bitterly.

There was a beat of silence. “Maybe you’re right,” Carol finally said. “I guess I do. But I didn’t pick this, you know.”

“I know. But you aren’t fainting every time I leave you.” Natasha thought she was probably the color of a beet now. She’d thought she had hated the idea of soulmates before, but actually being one was worse than anything she could have imagined.

“When Steve told me what happened, I came right here.”

“I feel like I should thank you, but I don’t want to.”

“You don’t have to,” Carol said. “I left you. Without thinking. And I hurt you. Maybe not on purpose but it might as well have been. The least I could do was sit with you until you were better.” She took in a deep breath, pausing for a moment, like she was trying to decide whether to say more. She must have decided yes because she spoke again. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t not like you. I don’t want to marry you and have babies with you, but …” She shrugged. “I could see us maybe being friends someday.”

Natasha looked at Carol. Really looked at her. The moonlight was shimmering on her hair, making it seem to glow. Carol was looking directly back at her, and Natasha thought for a second that maybe she could get lost in those eyes under entirely different circumstances.

“I wish this wasn’t how we met,” she finally said, because it was the only thing that made sense in her head.

“Yeah,” Carol said. “Me too.”


	3. Chapter Three

They started to spend more time together. Natasha sometimes couldn’t figure out if it was a choice she was consciously making or actions she was fated to choose. Being around Carol made her feel almost normal again, the way she had felt before Thanos murdered half her friends, the way she had felt before she had gone on the run with Steve and Sam, the way she had felt when the Avengers were her family and no one was at war with each other.

It was nice to feel okay again, and it was especially nice not to feel like she wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. And the more time she spent with Carol, the easier it was to be apart from her. Not for long stretches of time, but for two, then three, then four hours.

“It gets easier,” Bruce told her. “You find what works, and then it all clicks into place.”

He made it sound so easy, but Natasha knew it was anything but. She also had a feeling there were things Bruce and Steve didn’t tell her, like how to complete their bond. Though she had a feeling she knew what that entailed, and she also had a feeling it was never going to happen.

She might grow to like Carol, but she was never going to love her, not in that kind of way. And even if they had sex one day — not that she at all wanted to have sex with her — she doubted it was going to be the spark it seemed to be for other people.

After all, for pretty much her whole life, sex had always been just sex. How could it be any different with Carol?

But all that aside, Natasha was learning to accept her more, and maybe a tiny part of her even liked Carol a little.

They talked sometimes now. Over a cup of coffee or a slice of cheesecake that Carol showed her how to bake or after a sparring session or a run around the compound.

Carol never really talked about her childhood (“It was normal,” she said, even though Natasha never really understood what that meant when people would say that), but she did tell her about what happened with the Space Stone and how she got her powers. And she told her about meeting Fury and Coulson and some of the missions she had done for SHIELD.

Natasha always had the feeling that Carol was holding a lot back, but she didn’t say anything. After all, she held back just as much, or probably more.

She never talked to Carol about the Red Room or how she came to be a SHIELD agent, but she told her about the Avengers and some of the missions she’d been on with Clint and also Steve. She told her about what happened at the airport in Germany, and why they hadn’t all been together when Thanos struck.

“Do you wish you had chosen differently?” Carol asked her one night, after Natasha told her about life on the run with Steve and Sam and sometimes Wanda.

“Sometimes,” Natasha answered. She had never admitted that to anyone else. “Not at the airport. But in the beginning. I wish I’d found a different way.”

“People are going to do what they want to do,” Carol said. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I guess so. But I wish I had tried.”

\--

Eight days after Carol returned with Tony, there was another breakthrough.

Steve found Natasha and Carol eating lunch together in the kitchen area. “He used the stones again,” he told them, and he didn’t need to say anything more.

They left their food abandoned on the table and joined up with everyone else in the operations room.

“Tony and Thor are on the way,” Bruce said as they entered. The monitors that last time showed them where Tony was this time had a map of another galaxy Natasha didn’t recognize.

“Are you sure it’s him?” Carol asked.

“The energy signal it set off is an identical match to the one released in Wakanda at the same time as the first snap,” Bruce said. “So it’s pretty safe to say it’s him.” He pointed to a tiny white dot on the map.

“That is his home planet,” said a voice behind Natasha. She turned to see Nebula moving toward them, her face set in its permanent scowl.

“He went home, and what?” Carol frowned.

“Who cares what?” Rocket said. “Let’s go get him.”

“Tell me the coordinates, and I can go now,” Carol said.

Rocket glared at her. “No way, lady! We all go or no one goes.”

“That seems, uhhh ….” Rhodey never got to finish what he was going to say.

“We’re going to take everyone trooping across the galaxy when I could just go and get it done?” Carol interrupted.

“Yes!” It was Natasha’s turn to interrupt. She stared at Carol in horror and disappointment. She felt hurt, angry, let down. So many emotions swirling around her brain. It was stupid, she knew that on some level. Hadn’t she run into situations so many times without stopping to think about everyone around her, just because she needed to save someone? And this was about saving the universe. Not about her and what would happen if Carol went gallivanting off around the galaxy again.

But she couldn’t help it. Knowing what was going to happen as soon as Carol shot off, and knowing, that despite all the progress they had maybe made in the past week, that it meant nothing to Carol stung. Her eyes filled with tears, and she wiped them angrily away.

Everyone else was staring at the two of them, she knew they were, even Tony who had just walked in and who she hadn’t seen since he’d confronted her at the hospital in Germany more than two years ago.

She turned away from Carol and back to the monitor. “I think we should all go,” she said stiffly. “This fight belongs to all of us.”

No one dared disagree with her.

\--

Carol caught her arm just before they boarded the ship. She knew it was her by the warm feelings that flooded through her body at the touch, and she forced herself to remember that Carol had been willing to leave her behind and let her suffer for a cause she didn’t even have a personal stake in avenging.

“Natasha, stop,” she said softly.

Natasha stopped — because she wanted to, she told herself, not because Carol asked, even though she knew Carol hadn’t used her dom tone — but she didn’t turn around.

“I’m sorry,” Carol said. “I didn’t think.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

“But you would have.”

“I got caught up in the moment.”

Natasha whirled around now. “You got caught up trying to show everyone how much better than the rest of us you are!”

Now it was Carol who almost looked hurt. “That’s not fair.”

“But it’s true.”

Carol didn’t say anything. “I’m sorry,” she said again, but this time the softness of her earlier tone was gone and she pushed past Natasha to board the ship.

“You okay?” Steve said to Natasha quietly as they were buckling themselves in a few minutes later.

She looked up, at the back of Carol’s head in the pilot seat. “No,” she said. “But once this is over, maybe I will be.”

\--

She managed to keep it together the entire, way-too-long flight back to earth. Even the newfound feeling of being in space couldn’t make anything better.

The whole ship was shrouded in a heavy silence. No one talked. Barely anyone even moved. Except for a few whispered commands between Rocket and Carol as they flew them all home.

Natasha had taken Steve’s hand in hers once they had buckled themselves in and held it the entire trip back to Earth. She thought it was the least she could do after how much he had been looking after her. She could see the strain on his face as he tried to contain the pain and the frustration and the tears. She knew the thought of having Bucky back — this time for real — had been the main force driving him since Thanos had first used the stones. She wasn’t sure what he was going to do now that the chance of that seemed like it was probably gone forever.

It didn’t seem fair really. Steve had a soulmate he loved beyond anything in the world, and he was never going to see him again. She had one she didn’t want, and they were apparently stuck together, even after this.

Carol landed the ship in the middle of the grass at the compound. Natasha waited for everyone else to deplane first and then watched them disappear into the night. She wasn’t sure when she was going to see some of them again, and the pain of that thought seemed to crash on top of her.

She’d already lost Clint. He hadn’t answered any of her texts or calls since Thanos. She didn’t know if she could take losing anyone else.

It just felt like too much.

She didn’t realize she was just standing and staring until an arm slipped around her waist, and a warm voice whispered, “I’ve got you.”

She wanted to pull away — after all, some part of her was still angry at Carol for being ready to travel the universe despite knowing exactly what it would do to Natasha — but it was hard to be mad about someone wanting to avenge all their lost friends when the chance for revenge was now gone. And Carol’s arm around her felt so nice, so comforting, so safe.

She let Carol lead her back to the compound. She was so tired she thought she might have fallen over otherwise, and Carol’s touch was as warm as it always was. Part of her didn’t want to let her leave, but she wasn’t sure she could tell her that.

She ended up not needing to. Carol led her up the stairs and down the halls until they got to Natasha’s room, and then she helped her pull her suit off and slip into pajamas instead. She got her settled into bed, and then she did something Natasha really didn’t expect; she slipped in next to her.

“Carol?” she asked.

“I can go if you want,” Carol said, but her hand was smoothing Natasha’s hair back from her forehead, and it was all Natasha could do not to moan.

“No,” she managed. “You can stay.”

“Okay,” Carol said, and her hand didn’t stop moving over Natasha’s head. “I’ll stay.”

\--

The tears finally came in the middle of the night. Natasha didn’t remember what she had been dreaming, but suddenly she was awake, gasping for air, tears pouring down her cheeks, her body shaking.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Carol was awake too — maybe she had been the entire time — pulling Natasha into her arms and holding her tightly.

Natasha wrapped her arms around Carol, for the first time since they had discovered who they were to each other, actually wanting the comfort of someone who could ease her pain. And Carol didn’t hold back. She rocked her and soothed her and comforted her, and most of all, she let Natasha cry. Until finally Natasha pulled back to look into Carol’s eyes.

And then, whether it be as a way to mask the pain she was feeling or a weird type of thankfulness or maybe their connection playing with her mind, Natasha leaned forward and pressed her lips to Carol’s. 

For a tiny moment, she worried that Carol would push her away, jump up and tell her she was crazy, but Carol just tightened her hold around Natasha and kissed her back.

They sat there, in the middle of Natasha’s bed, their arms around each other, exploring each other’s mouths, their kisses alternating from gentle to something more intense and then dropping back to tender pecks.

For a moment, Natasha thought about seeing what Carol would do if she tried to go farther, but then she remembered who this was, and she pulled back. Carol was going to leave her not that long ago, without a second thought. She couldn’t trust her, she reminded herself.

Carol pushed her gently back down on the bed, as if sensing her hesitation, and kissed her a few more times, soft brushes of her lips against Natasha’s. Then she ran her knuckles down Natasha’s cheek, kissed her one more time, a bit harder, and then settled down beside her.

“Go to sleep, Natasha,” she heard Carol say. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

\--

Everything had changed. When Natasha woke up the next morning, to find rain belting down against the windows, it seemed only too fitting. It was almost as if they had all been surviving on hope, although they hadn’t known it, and now that it was gone, the full extent of what had happened when Thanos snapped their friends away hit them.

No one talked, not that morning nor into the night nor over the next couple days. They all just drifted around, existing but not interacting or doing much of anything else. 

One by one, they all disappeared, most without even a goodbye. Thor went first, then Rocket and Nebula. Then Rhodey. Then Bruce. Until it was only Natasha, Carol and Steve left.

Steve was sitting at the kitchen table, looking intently at something on his tablet, when Natasha walked in. Carol was on the other side of the room, looking out the window.

She and Carol hadn’t talked much over the past two weeks. In a way, almost all of their progress had halted. Natasha had an inclination that Carol was leaving her alone to grieve, but in truth, all it had done was make everything worse.

She wasn’t sure how to process everyone being gone, just snapped out of existence, and then to have everyone else she cared about drift away one by one as if she, or who they had once been, didn’t matter. And on top of it all, the one person who could make her feel better with a touch of her hand had left her to fend for herself (even if she knew deep down that it wasn’t a fair judgement; she had chosen not to go to Carol as much as Carol had chosen not to come to her).

Since the day she had defected from the Red Room, she had never once wished that she was still that same trapped girl she had been, but there was a part of her now that wished she remembered how it felt to turn off every emotion, to not let things affect her. She blamed Carol for most it — meeting her seemed to have awakened some emotional, needy part of her that had never been there before, and that part was lonely and frustrated and scared. The people she could talk to, confide in, were abandoning her one by one, and she was terrified of being left with just Carol.

That was, if Carol even wanted to stay, which, by the way she was staring out the window with a serious look on her face, Natasha had a feeling she didn’t.

Natasha sat down next to Steve. He lifted his head to face her, and her heart jolted. He was looking at her with an expression of guilt written all over his features, and she knew, without him even having to say it, what was coming.

“You’re leaving,” she whispered. The words seemed to almost get stuck in her throat, and to her horror, she felt stinging against her eyes and a rage of fury swell up inside her. How could he leave her? After everything they had been though? When he knew how much she needed him?

He pushed the tablet over so she could see what he was looking at. She glanced down, her vision blurry. 

She blinked a few times and realized he was showing her apartments in Brooklyn.

“You’re moving to Brooklyn,” she said to the tablet. Not to him. She couldn’t look at him.

“I can’t stay here.” His voice was apologetic. “It’s too painful. I’m sorry, Nat.”

She understood. She did. Rationally, she knew exactly what he meant. She felt it too. Every time she walked down a hall or into a room. Like ghosts from the past were just sitting there, reminding them of what once was and what could have been if things had just gone a little differently.

But yet, unlike Steve, unlike Rhodey, unlike Bruce, unlike everyone else, she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Sure, she could disappear again. She was good at that. Make a new cover, a new life. 

But this life, the Avengers, was the best life she had ever had. She couldn’t just leave. And part of her hated the rest of them for being able to. For walking away from what they had been. For walking away from _her_.

She stood up.

“Nat,” Steve said quickly. She could hear the guilt bubbling over now. “We’ll still see each other all the time. You’re my best friend. Nothing’s going to change.”

She stared at him, a glare she couldn’t keep away across her face.

“You never were a very good liar,” she said, and then she spun around.

She could hear him calling for her, but she didn’t listen. She didn’t want to be anywhere near him.

\--

Steve left two days later. He tried to talk to her, but she stayed secluded in her room and didn’t answer when he knocked. She knew she was hurting his feelings, but she didn’t care. Her whole life had turned upside down and she didn’t see any silver lining to any of it.

Her friends were gone — either literally vanished from existence or just vanished from her life. She had a soulmate she didn’t want, biological chemistry that was against everything she believed in. And the one person who she thought would help her with it, who she thought would always be there, left her to fend for herself, even though he had once promised to help her in any way he could.

Five minutes after she had watched Steve’s truck disappear down the dirt road that led from the compound to the main road, there came a knock on her bedroom door.

There was only one option for who it could be.

“What do you want?” she almost snarled as she opened the door. To her credit, Carol just looked at her, her entire expression neutral. If Natasha hadn’t been feeling so angry, she would almost have been impressed.

“Just checking on you,” Carol said, but even though she tried, Natasha couldn’t detect any pity or even sympathy in her voice. 

Good.

“Are you going to leave too?” It came out a lot harsher than she intended.

Carol shrugged. “Can’t say I haven’t thought about it,” she said. “I’m not exactly the type to stay in one place. But,” she added quickly. “I think we have some unfinished business before that happens.”

Natasha frowned. “Bruce and Steve were supposed to help us break the connection.” Anger fueled again inside her as she thought of how they both left, neither caring enough about her to even remember the promises they had made.

“I meant setting up a new Avengers,” Carol said. “But sure, that too.”

Natasha frowned at her more. “What?” she said. She had no idea what Carol meant.

“Do you think the world’s going to stop needing to be saved just because none of them want to stick around to save it?”

Natasha hadn’t really thought about it. She shook her head.

“I think it makes you in charge now,” Carol said.

Natasha hadn’t really thought about that either. 

Carol held out her hand. “Come on,” she said, as thought everything had been decided. “We need to get you an office. We have some work to do.”

Natasha’s head was spinning. She was so angry and so hurt at everyone leaving, she hadn’t even considered whether she still wanted to be an Avenger. But had there ever been a choice? What else would she be if not?

But could she lead a team if everyone she had been on a team was gone? Would anyone else even care?

She looked at Carol and realized there was at least one other person who cared. Maybe there were more, too.

For the first time since they had killed Thanos, she felt a tiny spark of hope burst to life inside her chest. Maybe Carol was right. Maybe because everyone else walked away didn’t mean she had to also.

She took Carol’s hand.


	4. Chapter Four

It was different working side by side with Carol now that they had a purpose. They went through every room in the compound, cleaning up messes that been left behind, putting away equipment they wouldn’t need, going through the SHIELD tech they had ended up with and keeping out the stuff they could most use.

They set up a new team of sorts — her, Carol, Okoye in Wakanda, Rhodey, Rocket and Nebula. Not just an earth team but all over the galaxy.

Together they scoured reports for conflicts on Earth and elsewhere. When something needed help off the Earth, Rocket and Nebula would go (even though Natasha could tell Carol was sometimes dying to help), and when there was something on their side of the world, she and Carol would go together.

When they weren’t scouring reports or checking in on their team, they would train. Training with Carol was unlike any training Natasha had done before. Carol didn’t hold back. She was strong and she was fast, and Natasha had to use every skill she had in order to get the upper hand, but the feeling when she did was exhilarating.

About three weeks after Steve had moved out, Carol and Natasha were lying on the mats on the floor of the gym, side by side. They had just finished a more grueling workout than ever before, and Natasha had a feeling she was going to be very sore and very bruised in the morning.

She and Carol hadn’t talked much about _them_ during the last few weeks, but they had also barely left each other’s sides. Even at night, Carol would often sleep next to her. Natasha suspected it was because Carol was worried she would become upset during the night if she were alone, and even though the thought of Carol thinking that annoyed her, Natasha also wasn’t willing to say otherwise. She did like knowing that someone had at least stayed with her, that someone was on her side.

Steve had called her, like he’d promised he would, but it wasn’t the same. Even if she knew she couldn’t blame him, her brain didn’t want to forgive him for deserting her and she would usually end their calls before he could tell her more than how he was doing and ask if she was okay.

But now, lying next to Carol on the mats, Natasha had a feeling there was something Carol needed to tell her. Maybe it was their unspoken connection or maybe it was just something she had noticed subconsciously in Carol’s attitude, but all of a sudden, Natasha felt herself grow nervous, her hands growing sweaty.

She closed her eyes.

“You can tell me,” she said, purposely not shifting in any way toward Carol. “Whatever it is you’ve been wanting to say.”

She waited for the words to come out of Carol’s mouth, for her to tell her she couldn’t stay Earthbound anymore and that she needed to leave, whether they had broken the connection between them or not.

“I think we should have sex.”

Natasha choked. Her eyes flew open, and she sat upright. “What?”

They hadn’t even kissed since the first time. Even in sleep, Carol barely touched her.

“I was doing some research on soulmates,” she said. “And on how people are able to navigate the sub’s reliance on the dom. And a lot of it seems to suggest that coming together actually makes it easier to then be apart.”

Natasha shook her head. “Wait,” she said. “You’re saying you want to have sex with me, so you can leave me? Fly back off into the universe and never come back? Not have to have any guilt?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

“I don’t want to leave you, Natasha.”

“You just want to be able to.”

“That isn’t what I said.” They both drifted into silence. Part of Natasha wanted to get up and stalk away, but the part of her that needed Carol refused to let her. She cursed herself for being weak.

“You know I’ve never purposely dommed you.” Carol spoke again after a few minutes. “Other than when you were having a panic attack.”

Natasha didn’t look at her, but she felt her stomach tense. She wasn’t sure where this was going and she wasn’t sure she was going to like it.

“Do you want to?” she said.

Carol shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m supposed to.”

Suddenly everything snapped into place. Natasha felt almost her entire body flush, in rage and, unfortunately, arousal.

“You want to dom me during sex,” she said. Anger was evident in her voice. She knew it, and she tried to focus on that. 

An image popped into her mind of Carol, ordering her to submit while she lay naked on her bed, and she felt herself start to grow wet.

“No!” She was on her feet, before Carol could even answer, anger now breaking through the surface. “I won’t let you! Not ever!”

And then she was gone, running from the gym and down the halls, tearing through the compound, no idea where she was going, until she was flying out the front doors, racing down the path that wrapped around the compound, her feet pounding on the hard ground, her heart beating furiously in her chest, her breath coming in short, shallow puffs.

She hated Carol for suggesting that. She hated herself for wanting it. She hated this stupid world for making her something she didn’t ever want to be.

Hate, hate, hate.

She barely realized she was crying, even as her vision blurred, but still she pressed on, trying to only think about how fast she was running, how far she could go.

She couldn’t hear any sounds other than her own feet and her heartbeat and the blood rushing in her ears. If Carol was coming after her, she was doing it silently. Natasha sped up, bolting off the path that led in a circle around the compound to dart through the trees and out into the more wild area.

She knew she should turn around soon and run back, or at least run near to the building. It had been so long since she and Carol had been apart, she didn’t know how she would react.

But she was still so angry. And she could not give her the satisfaction of coming back to her.

She pressed on, farther and farther away. 

The sun was starting to dip below the horizon when she finally came to a stop, collapsing to her knees, her lungs painful. 

She hadn’t realized how tired she was, how weak she felt. She fell forward on to the ground, feeling the solid surface beneath her cheek.

Something poked her in the side. She reached down and dug out her phone. 

It had been so long since she had talked to him, but she had to know, she had to ask.

Bruce answered on the first ring.

“I need help,” Natasha whispered into the phone, and she cursed herself when her voice broke.

Bruce pretended not to notice. “Tell me what happened.”

So she told him, about the conversation in the gym, about what she knows Carol was implying.

“How do you let someone dom you during sex?” she asked. “How do you just let someone have full control of you? And make you do something you don’t want to do?”

“You’re not letting them make you do something you don’t want to do,” Bruce said on the other end of the phone. “That’s still rape. Being a sub doesn’t mean letting a dom rape you. It means trusting them enough to be vulnerable around them.”

“But they’re in control,” Natasha argued.

“Because you let them be,” Bruce said. “Because you trust them to be. You trust them to take care of you. I know Betty would never do anything to me that I wouldn’t want her to. She would never take advantage of me.” He paused. “And I don’t think Carol would do that to you.”

“She asked …”

“She’s just trying to figure it out like you are, Natasha. And you’re never going to figure it out unless you give it a chance.”

“What if I don’t want to have sex with her?”

“Then don’t have sex with her. There’s other ways to figure it out too.”

Natasha slipped the phone back into her pocket after she hung up with Bruce. It was almost dark now. She knew she should go back, but she was so tired.

She laid back on the ground, closing her eyes, Bruce’s words whirling around in her mind. She thought about Carol, about the way she had felt when Carol had kissed her, about the way she felt when Carol touched her.

Did she want to have sex with Carol? She wasn’t sure. How would she know if she wanted to because she wanted to or if she wanted to because her stupid body told her she wanted to?

Did she trust Carol? Well, she barely trusted anyone. She had trusted the other Avengers. She had trusted Steve. And where had that gotten her? Lying in a field in the dark, avoiding the only person who had even stuck with her when everyone else had gotten as far away as possible as fast as they could.

Fuck.

Natasha opened her eyes and sat up. Her vision tilted.

Panic gripped her. How long had it been since she had run off? It had been too long. She pulled herself to her feet. 

She could feel it, the effects of not being close enough to Carol. Her vision was continuing to blur, her breath was getting tight in her chest, she could feel her thoughts starting to grow dull around the edges.

She needed to get back.

She looked around her. Where was she? She thought she had known, but suddenly nothing looked familiar. She tried to remember how she had gotten here, but it wasn’t making sense.

Desperate she yanked her phone back out of her pocket and pressed a button.

“Help me,” she whispered into the phone when it was answered, and then she hung up, sinking back to the ground and hating herself more than she already thought was possible.

It felt like forever that she sat there, curled around herself on the ground, whimpering like a child who had lost her mother, until a soft noise told her Carol had arrived. She let Carol pull her into her arms. She tucked her head under Carol’s shoulder as she felt the warmth flow through her. The pain disappeared. The fog disappeared. She could breathe again.

“Do you want me to fly us home?” Carol asked her softly, and Natasha realized she was rubbing her back.

“Do you mind if we walk?”

“Not at all.”

Carol helped pull her to her feet, and they set off, walking hand in hand back through the trees. Far, far in the distance, Natasha could see the lights of the compound. She hadn’t realized just how far she had run.

“I hope you know I would never force you to do anything you don’t want to do,” Carol said as they finally emerged from the trees back on to the path that circled the building. “I know I have an unequal amount of power, but I’m trying to be careful with that.”

Carol’s words washed over her, almost as warm as her hand that was still gripping Natasha’s. 

She had come when Natasha called. Two words and she had been there. She had held her hand the entire way back, and even without checking the time, Natasha knew it had been at least three or four hours.

Carol had given up whatever she might have wanted to do on this night to come get her. Hell, she had given up whatever she might have wanted to do for the past few months to stay here with her when everyone else had run far away. Because as much as she wanted to leave, she knew it would hurt Natasha, so she stayed.

She stayed. And she cared. And she tried.

Natasha stopped walking. Carol looked back at her and stopped too.

“What?” Carol said.

“I do trust you,” Natasha said. “I didn’t think I did, but I do.”

“Okay.”

“I want to be with you. In every way.”

Carol’s head tilted to the side. She looked at Natasha curiously.

“Let’s have sex. Let’s try it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

\--

They stood face to face in Natasha’s bedroom. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She had always thought of sex as just something people did to release stress or have fun. It had never really meant much of anything to her.

But this felt like it should mean something, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

“Remember,” Carol was saying. “If there is something you don’t like, just say ‘stop’ or ‘no’, and I will stop right away.”

Natasha nodded, but then she had a thought. “But if you dom me, how can I say no?”

“I’m ordering you to,” Carol said simply. She reached out and placed her hand on Natasha’s arm, heat instantly radiating from Carol’s hand throughout Natasha’s whole body. When Carol spoke again, her voice was different — lower, raspier — and it made Natasha feel like she needed to do what she said.

“When you don’t like something, you tell me to stop,” Carol commanded.

Natasha found herself nodding. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Now get undressed. You can leave your underwear on. And lie face down on the bed. I have a surprise for you.”

Natasha nodded again. It was a simple request. She could do that. She wanted to do that. She wanted to know what Carol had planned for them.

Very slowly, she pulled her tank top off over her head. She could feel Carol’s eyes on her, looking her over. Natasha knew Carol had seen her in various stages of undress before — when she’d helped her change after they returned from Thanos, the nights they’d gone to bed at the same time and pulled on their night clothes in the same room — but this felt different.

She darted a glance in Carol’s direction. Carol was smiling, and there was a look in her eyes Natasha had never seen before.

Admiring, maybe? Pleased?

Natasha felt herself flush.

She reached down to tug her black twill shorts down her legs, letting them fall to her ankles and then stepping out of them. Carol didn’t look away. Natasha took a deep breath, trying to quell her nerves.

Carol took a step closer to her. “You’re beautiful,” she said quietly, and her words seemed to wash over Natasha. “Thank you for letting me share this moment with you.”

Natasha could have come on the spot. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. No one had ever looked at her before like Carol was looking at her now either.

She felt herself grow wet as her fingers fumbled with the clasp of her bra, finally undoing it and letting it slide off her arms, exposing herself to Carol for the first time.

Carol took another step toward her, raising a hand. Natasha thought she was going to stroke her breast. Instead she placed her hand on Natasha’s cheek, leaned in and kissed her gently.

Natasha felt her knees grow weak as warmth flooded through her. Then Carol pulled away and nodded slightly, and Natasha turned, crawling across the bed and letting Carol get a good view, before settling herself down on her stomach, her head on the pillow.

“If this doesn’t feel good, you tell me,” Carol commanded. Natasha heard a small pop, and then the smell of something akin to warm vanilla mixed with cinnamon filled the room. Natasha breathed in deeply as she felt the bed dip, and then she felt Carol swing her legs over on either side of her thighs and sit gently on top of her.

For just a second, Natasha tensed, realizing that she was in essence trapped by Carol’s legs and her strength. But then she remembered Carol holding her in her arms underneath the trees the night she had run off and how safe she had felt then, and she relaxed again.

Carol waited until she was breathing deeply.

“Ready?” Carol asked.

“Yes.”

A moment later, Carol’s hands were touching her shoulders, rubbing and squeezing her gently. It was oil that Carol had opened, and Natasha took in another deep breath.

Carol’s hands were warm and strong, and every stoke against Natasha seemed to feel even better than the one before. It was almost like she could feel the tension and the stress of the past weeks easing away under Carol’s touch, and she closed her eyes, letting everything go except for the feel of the fingers working on her body.

Carol could have been a professional. She spent a lot of time on Natasha’s shoulders and on her back. Then she moved her hair out of the way and rubbed her neck and stroked her fingers through Natasha’s curls, her nails just barely scraping Natasha’s scalp. 

By the time, she got to Natasha’s arms and the area above her hips, Natasha felt like she could fall asleep, just lying there as Carol touched her, her whole body warm and relaxed and tension-free.

And then Carol’s fingers grazed over Natasha’s nipples and she jerked, her eyes opening.

She hadn’t even realized Carol had slipped her hands underneath her front, but she was cupping a breast in each hand, her thumb rubbing each of her nipples.

“Tell me to stop if you need to,” Carol said, and Natasha shook her head.

“I like it,” she murmured, and she did. 

She took another deep breath to relax again as Carol kneaded her breasts and rubbed over her nipples. She had never considered herself to be super sensitive in the breast area, but with Carol, it was like there was a direct line between her breasts and her vagina. She felt herself growing wetter and wetter, the arousal deep in her gut becoming more and more present.

And then Carol’s hands disappeared from Natasha’s breasts and she cried out into her pillow, but Carol was moving down her legs and then her hands — oh god, her hands — were on the sides of Natasha’s underwear, and Natasha wanted nothing more than for Carol to just go ahead and fuck her right there.

Natasha lifted her lower half just slightly and Carol gave a tug, Natasha’s pair of black underwear sliding easily over her ass and then down her legs and then Carol slipped them off her ankles. If she noticed they were soaking wet already, she didn’t say anything.

“I want you to roll over so you’re on your back,” Carol said, and Natasha drew in a sharp breath before complying.

She watched Carol as she turned, but Carol was looking adoringly down at her, her eyes roaming over her entire body. Natasha felt herself grow warm, her body flushing but also more turned on than she could ever remember being. She felt like a live wire, ready to snap at any moment.

Carol looked up and met her eyes. They stared at each other for a few moments. 

“Would you let me touch you?” Carol asked, despite the fact that she had already been touching her, but Natasha nodded all the same, her mouth dry.

“You need to give me a verbal answer, Natasha.”

“Yes,” she forced out. “I want you to touch me.”

“Can I touch your breasts?”

“Yes. Please,” she managed, and then Carol was crawling up her body again, her legs swinging over Natasha’s hips, her jean-clad center hovering above Natasha’s stomach.

Natasha gasped when Carol reached for both her breasts at the same time, taking them each in one hand, rubbing them gently. She stroked her nipples with the nail of her thumbs.

“Can I taste them?” Carol asked.

“Yes.”

Carol dipped her head and sucked Natasha’s right nipple into her mouth. Natasha moaned, the heat in her belly suddenly seeming to amplify. All the warmth that she had felt every time Carol had touched her since her arrival all those months ago now seemed like a passing flicker. This was different — she felt like she was on fire, Carol’s touching simultaneously burning her skin but also filling her whole body with a type of warmth and pleasure she had never known before.

Natasha tilted her head back, arching her chest up into Carol’s mouth and hand, letting Carol rub her and suck on her.

Natasha felt almost dizzy, lightheaded and like she never wanted Carol to stop. 

But Carol did stop. She came off of Natasha’s breast with a small pop, and Natasha almost cried out in agony at the sudden lack of touching.

“I want to touch you between your legs,” Carol said, and Natasha almost groaned at the words. “I want to put my fingers and tongue inside you, and I want to fuck you until you come. And then, if you’re okay with it, I want to keep fucking you, until you come again. Would that be okay?”

“Yes.” Natasha couldn’t nod fast enough. She had never wanted anything more. “Yes, please.”

“Okay.” Carol reached up and put a hand against Natasha’s cheek. A smile curved across her face. “You’re doing so wonderful, sweetheart. I’m going to make you feel so good.”

_Sweetheart._

Natasha didn’t even have time — nor did she really have the brain power at the moment — to ponder the pet name Carol had suddenly given her, but it didn’t matter because Carol had slid off her and was now standing at the end of the bed by Natasha’s feet.

She learned forward and grabbed Natasha by the hips, pulling her off the pillow and halfway down the bed until her ass was balanced on the very edge, her legs hanging over.

“Bend your knees and spread your legs as wide for me as you can,” Carol commanded, and Natasha did what she was told, balancing her feet on the edge of the bed, as wide open as she could get herself.

Carol stared down at her, a pleased sort of smile playing over her lips.

“Yes. Beautiful,” she said. “You’re so beautiful.”

Natasha felt herself blush, even though she couldn’t remember ever blushing during sex before. 

Carol reached a hand out, one finger pointed, and then placed it down directly on Natasha’s center, moving her finger down the length of her entire slit. She then lifted her hand and sucked on her finger, her eyes never leaving Natasha’s.

Natasha’s blush grew.

“You’re perfect, sweetheart,” Carol said. “You’re so wet for me already.”

“Yes,” Natasha said, even though she knew Carol hadn’t been looking for an answer.

Carol pressed a finger from her other hand up next to the first. Then she bent down. Natasha could feel her gliding her fingers through all of Natasha’s folds, opening her wide, exploring her, rubbing her.

Natasha watched Carol as she worked, Natasha’s breaths growing shallower and shallower. She had never had anyone touch her the way Carol was touching her, like she was examining some sort of hidden treasure. 

Then Carol’s eyes flicked up and she smirked just so. Natasha sucked in a lungful of air just as Carol dipped her head and latched her lips around Natasha’s clit. Natasha jerked, a moan escaping her lips, so taken by surprise that at first she didn’t even realize Carol had slid one of her fingers inside her, but then Carol’s finger was pressing up against her, just the way she liked it, and Natasha felt like maybe Carol could see into her mind.

She was groaning now, cries escaping her lips as Carol thrust her finger inside her and sucked on her clit.

And then Carol sat back, her face wet from Natasha’s juices, and Natasha was so close to coming, but Carol put her free hand on Natasha’s thigh.

“You don’t come until I tell you to, okay, sweetheart?” 

Part of Natasha wanted to say no, that was absolutely not okay, because she wanted to come right now, but instead she found herself nodding, wanting to do what Carol asked of her, wanting to make Carol proud of her.

“Use your words, sweetheart.”

Natasha had to try a few times before sound came out. “Yes,” she finally managed to gasp. “No coming. Until. You say. So.”

“Good girl.”

Natasha pressed her head back against the comforter and squeezed her eyes shut. Her hands, which had been beside her, now squeezed the comforter as hard as she could.

Her hips were jerking against Carol’s fingers and her mouth as Carol got back to work. She had added a second finger now, scissoring her as she plunged her fingers deep inside her. She had also gone back to lapping at her clit, alternating between soft and hard licks and then sucking it into her mouth.

Natasha felt like she was on the edge of insanity. Her whole body was tense, every muscle shuddering. All she wanted to do was give in to the pleasure that was surrounding her, let herself succumb. But Carol’s words were replaying in her head and she didn’t want to do anything to let her down or to disappoint her or to make her not want to do this with her again.

But it was so much. Too much.

Tears started to escape her eyes as she writhed on the bed, Carol’s fingers still buried in her cunt, her mouth lapping at her.

“Please,” she heard herself moaning. “Please.” And she would have been embarrassed if this was any other time in her life or if she hadn’t felt like she wasn’t going to make it if Carol didn’t just let her come right this second.

“Please, please, please, please, please.” The moans were leaving her lips like a chant now. She was squirming against the bed, anything to keep the friction from overwhelming her, but Carol was fucking her just how she liked and her tongue against her felt so good, and she was spread so wide and she couldn’t … she couldn’t …

“Okay.”

She almost missed it, Carol’s soft command against her leg. “You can come for me now, sweetheart.”

Natasha didn’t have to be told twice. 

Her orgasm crashed over her, her vision almost whiting out, her muscles convulsing. She knew she was screaming, she knew she was still crying, but all she cared about was the warm pleasure that enveloped her, like nothing she had ever known before.

She didn’t know how long it had been before she came back to reality to find Carol still stroking her gently between her legs. She twitched as Carol’s thumb scraped across her clit.

“You did so good, sweetheart,” Carol said, when she saw Natasha’s eyes were open. “You are so beautiful when you come.”

Carol slid a finger back inside her and Natasha whimpered, her body jerking at the sensation. It was barely anything, but it was so much, too much …

“It’s okay,” Carol said, and she moved her finger gently in and out. “You can come again whenever you’d like this time. And then you can sleep.” She curled her finger inside Natasha, and Natasha cried out, her back arching.

“Or you can sleep right now,” Carol said.

Natasha tried to think — what did she want? — her head was so fuzzy with the aftermath of pleasure and she could feel it prickling at her senses again and Carol was looking at her and her whole body was so sensitive and she wanted to close her eyes but she wanted …

She came. Out of nowhere, another orgasm jolted through her and she cried out again, but this time when she opened her eyes, she was alone.

For a second, a sense of betrayal passed over her. She knew she was still naked, still spread out on her own bed, but then Carol was beside her, stroking her hair and wiping her body with a warm, wet cloth, and she realized she hadn’t been alone after all — Carol had just gone to the bathroom. 

She tried to say thank you, but she was so tired … so tired …

She felt Carol lifting her, moving her back up toward the pillows, adjusting her legs, pressing the cloth against her and she wanted to open her eyes, to talk to her, to say _something_ , do _something_ , but she was so tired … so tired … so … tired.


	5. Chapter Five

Natasha awoke to a beam of sunlight across the bed. She was alone, but instead of feeling betrayed, she felt grateful.

She pushed back the blanket that was covering her and sat up. She was in a tank top and underwear. She didn’t remember Carol helping her to dress nor could she recall if Carol had spent the night, but a look to her left confirmed a dent in the pillow so she knew she must have.

Her mind wandered back to last night and then to her present state.

They had done it. They had sealed a soulmate bond of some sort. They’d had sex, and she had let Carol dom her.

It was different than she had expected, different than she had feared. Nicer. Much more pleasurable. Natasha had never come as hard as she had last night for anyone. She had certainly never passed out without returning the favor before.

She flushed as she realized she had gotten all the fun. If Carol had already been disappointed by her soulmate, what could she think of her now?

Natasha slid out of bed, slipping into a pair of yoga pants she found tossed over a chair. Carol had just spent the entire night fucking her out of her mind, but somehow the idea of walking downstairs in her underwear was appalling.

But then again, maybe Carol already regretted what they had done?

She found her in the kitchen area. She was standing by the sink, sipping a cup of coffee, judging from the aroma in the air, and wearing the smallest shorts Natasha had ever seen her wear. Just looking at her made her stomach twist and heat pool in her belly.

She shook her head. She was not now, nor had she ever been, needy when it came to sex. She wasn’t about to start just because biology told her she should.

She took a step toward Carol, but Carol must have heard her, and she turned around, lowering the mug, with a grin on her face.

“Hi,” she said. “How’d you sleep?”

Natasha didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her mind was racing again. What if Carol was disappointed in her? What if Carol still hated being stuck to her? What if Carol slept with her just so she could leave her now?

Natasha felt a surge of fear spread through her entire body, and she almost stumbled.

Carol set down her cup of coffee and moved closer to her, arm outstretched.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha blurted before Carol could touch her. She spotted an empty chair just a step away from her, shuffling to the side and sinking into it.

Carol paused, watching her, confusion across her face. “You’re sorry?”

“For last night.” Natasha felt herself flush, and she dropped her eyes. She was so needy and desperate around Carol.

Carol still looked confused.

Natasha looked up to meet her eyes. “I know it wasn’t … you didn’t ….” She stopped, biting her lip. Carol still wasn’t saying anything. “You deserve a soulmate who makes you happy,” she finally said. 

Carol’s eyes widened. “Ohhhhh,” she said, and then she sat down at the table across from Natasha. She looked like she was thinking. Probably about how to tell Natasha she didn’t want her.

Finally, she looked up. “You know,” she began, “it took me a long time to figure out what makes me happy. For so long, the Kree convinced me I was someone I wasn’t. But even before then, it sometimes felt like something was missing.” Carol shrugged. Natasha watched her a little apprehensively, not quite sure where this was going.

Carol continued. “But there came a time when I did realize who I am, and what I can do. And I began to help people who needed it. I began to save worlds and people that no one else could. And that made me happy. It made me really happy.”

“And you want to do that again,” Natasha whispered. She felt a little like her stomach had fallen out of her body. Carol wanted to leave. She had known she had, but she hadn’t thought it would be so soon. But why hadn’t she thought that? Hadn’t Carol said she wanted them to be bonded so she could leave her?

Natasha blinked, trying to keep back the tears she felt building up behind her eyes.

Carol reached out and took Natasha’s hand. Like always, the pressure in her chest seemed to loosen just a little, and she felt calmer, her thoughts less scattered.

“I was going to say,” Carol said, “that I thought saving the universe was the only thing that could make me happy, but last night, with you, that made me happy. I liked making you happy, and I didn’t need anything else.”

Natasha blinked. She had not been expecting that.

“Why?” she finally managed. She thought about it. “The power?”

Carol shook her head. “I don’t need power,” she said. “I’m stronger than almost everyone. I don’t want to control you — I’ve always told you that — I just want to take care of you and see you happy. It makes me feel good to know you trust me and are willing to be vulnerable around me.” Carol shrugged. “I guess I am a dom after all.” She squeezed Natasha’s hand a little tighter. “How was it for you?”

Natasha thought about lying, always her first instinct when someone wanted her to open up to them. But instead she smiled. “It was incredible,” she said. “But I don’t want you to …”

“Don’t worry, Natasha.” Carol spoke over her. “I’m going to let you return the favor soon enough.”

\--

Carol hadn’t been kidding. They tried it that night, Carol giving her commands, instructing her on exactly how she liked things and what exactly to do, and when Carol came for her, Natasha felt a warmth flood her body that was different than the normal warmth that came from being so close to Carol but also different from the way she had felt after her own orgasms the night before. 

She paused as Carol recovered from her orgasm, almost flummoxed. She felt like a child whose parents were proud of her, but no … she didn’t want that … she didn’t crave approval … she didn’t want to crave Carol’s approval …

Carol must have seen the change in her demeanor, because she sat up and took Natasha’s hand.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Natasha looked into her eyes and felt like she was falling. She shook her head and let Carol push her gently down on the bed and position her exactly how she wanted. 

“Good girl. Such a good girl,” Carol said, over and over, as she brought Natasha to orgasm multiple times until her head was so fuzzy and she was so tired she couldn’t remember why it would bother her or if it should, and she fell asleep with Carol wrapped around her, still telling her just how good she was.

\--

“Do you want to talk about what happened last night?” 

Carol was the one that brought it up. They were sitting at the table, eating donuts that Carol had snuck out early that morning to buy.

“I know I did something wrong,” Carol said. “But I’m not sure what it was.”

Natasha put the donut in her hand down on the table. She had been thinking about it since she woke up that morning. “I think there’s something wrong with me,” she said finally. “Not you.”

Carol waited for her to continue. Natasha paused for a minute, trying to organize her thoughts. She still wasn’t sure how she felt, and she didn’t want to upset Carol.

Which right there was the problem, wasn’t it?

“Sometimes,” she finally started, “I’m not sure who I am when I’m with you.”

Carol still didn’t say anything, but she put her donut down too and gave Natasha her full attention.

“I’ve never needed anyone,” Natasha told her. “They trained us that way. To work alone. To live alone. And that was fine. And then I joined SHIELD … and everything changed for me a little. Being around other agents and then the Avengers. Having to trust them in the field and rely on them. But even still, I didn’t _need_ them. But now ...” Natasha stopped again, fear suddenly filling her. What if she scared Carol away?

Carol reached across the table, almost like she knew what Natasha was thinking, and took her hand. Again, the warmth that always came when Carol touched her flooded through her, but this time it had the additional effect of almost crystallizing her thoughts.

She lifted her head to meet Carol’s eyes. “I’ve never needed anyone the way I need you,” she told her. “I’ve never needed anyone to think I’m good enough. Or anything enough. I’ve never needed their approval. But I need yours. I _want_ yours. I crave it. All the time. When we’re sparring and when we’re cooking and when we’re having sex. And I don’t …” She trailed off. Carol rubbed a thumb over her knuckles, silently encouraging her to keep going.

“I don’t know how to be okay with that,” she finally finished, and then she stopped talking. Waiting.

Carol kept holding her hand, kept looking at her.

“That’s okay,” she said, after what felt like an eternity.

“That’s okay?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Carol said. “All of this, it’s still new. It was still unexpected. You don’t have to be okay with everything right away. I don’t have to be okay with it either. We just have to figure it out together.”

“In the story books and the movies, they always figure it out right away,” Natasha muttered. She didn’t mention how she had hated those books and those movies, how she had complained that nothing could be that easy whenever she was forced to read or watch one.

Carol laughed. “Well, we had to be more complicated than most of the stories, didn’t we?”

Natasha cracked a smile at that.

“If there’s certain things you don’t like that I do,” Carol said, “you can tell me, and I can change them. I don’t want any of this to make you uncomfortable.”

Natasha knew she was referring to the other nights. The good girls. And the sweethearts. She felt herself blush, even as she shook her head. 

“No,” she said. “I like it. I just …”

“Feel like you shouldn’t like it?”

“Yeah. That.”

Carol shrugged. “People say it gets easier,” she said. “Maybe it will.”

\--

It did get easier. Carol was right. The longer they spent together, the more they learned what the other one liked. The more they learned what they themselves liked.

Natasha realized that after hard days of trying to save the world and making sure she was on top of everything, she liked releasing control, she liked giving in to Carol and letting Carol tell her what to do, she liked not having to think about everything and plan for everything and make sure everything was okay. She could just be in the moment and let someone else take care of the details.

She also discovered that even though it sometimes still embarrassed her to admit, she liked when Carol would take care of her.

But she stopped at being babied. She liked when Carol spooned with her, but not when she bathed her, unless they were showering together. She liked when Carol praised her during sex, but not when she complimented her when they were training, and she definitely didn’t want compliments when they were working. She knew she was good at what she did — she didn’t need Carol to point it out.

And Carol, for her part, enjoyed taking care of Natasha, enjoyed being in charge when it came to sex, but she stopped short of doing anything that she considered over the line. She would tie Natasha’s wrists to the bed with scarves if Natasha asked her to. She would blindfold her and tease her, keeping her on the edge of her release, for hours. But she refused to spank her or discipline her in other ways.

“I’m not your handler,” she would say, but Natasha knew it was more than that. She knew Carol worried about losing control and accidentally hurting her, and Natasha respected her enough — maybe you could even say, she cared about her enough — to not push her into doing something she clearly wasn’t comfortable doing, even if Natasha thought she might enjoy being on the receiving side of it.

But along with spending more time together and learning more about each other, something else happened too. Their bond strengthened more, and Natasha knew it was inevitable.

As inevitable as the day she walked into the bathroom to see Carol brushing her teeth, dressed in full uniform.

They stared at each other in the mirror for a few moments, Carol in her uniform, Natasha still naked from the night before, soft pink marks around her wrists and ankles where she had been tied to the bed posts for hours.

“You’re leaving,” she said. She didn’t bother even phrasing it as a question.

“It will only be twenty-four hours,” Carol said. She turned around, reaching into her pocket and then pressing something into Natasha’s hand. 

Natasha looked down to see what looked a little like a remote for a car.

“If you feel at all like you’re going to be sick, or in pain, you press that and I’ll come back.”

“I thought you needed to go save a galaxy?”

Carol smiled. “Nebula and Rocket asked for backup. I told them it was contingent.” She stepped over to Natasha and pulled her into her arms. Natasha felt the rough edges of Carol’s suit brushing against her bare breasts, and she shivered slightly. 

“I’m going to miss you,” Carol said.

Natasha tilted her head up, and Carol leaned down and kissed her, her hand tangling in Natasha’s hair and then dropping down to run over her breast and then down between her legs, stroking gently over her clit. Natasha whimpered into the kiss.

“I’ll be home soon,” Carol said, and she stepped back.

Natasha nodded, trying with all her willpower to keep the tears at bay. But as she watched Carol disappear from the bathroom and walk away down the hall, she couldn’t help feeling empty, the ache that Carol had created between her legs not even close to the one she left in her heart.

\--

Carol was back twenty-four hours later, just as she had promised she would be. But Natasha had known that when Carol left that day, it was only the start, and she had been right.

Carol’s one day gone turned into two turned into three turned into a week turned into a month.

She did come back as much as she was able, and the times she was back were amazing — they worked together, they trained together, they spent nights in bed together — but the days without her far outnumbered the days spent with her, and all of them were long and empty and miserable.

Days slowly ticked by, then weeks, then months, and even years. By the time they passed the five-year anniversary of the Snap, Carol was barely around at all. Steve barely called. Natasha hadn’t heard from Bruce or Thor or Tony in months.

She tried hard to keep it together, to pretend she was fine, to pretend that being alone wasn’t bothering her — why should it bother her? She had spent most of her life alone; this was nothing new.

She spent hours staring at the little remote Carol had insisted she keep. She had never used it, no matter how much she missed her or how lonely she was. She didn’t have a real reason to use it, and she couldn’t be selfish. Saving the universe made Carol happy — that was what she had told Natasha once — and she wasn’t going to take Carol away from doing something she clearly loved.

But then she got the phone call. From Rhodey.

“You might want to sit down,” he told her.

“I am sitting,” she said. She was, in fact, perched on the corner of her desk. It was close enough to sitting.

“I found Clint,” he said.

Natasha felt like her heart left her body and dropped to her feet. The fingers of her free hand clenched around the edge of the wooden surface. “Where is he?” She could barely get the words out.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Where is he?” she repeated.

“I don’t know where he is,” Rhodey said. “But I know where he’s been. Check your email.”

Natasha did. And the phone slipped from her hand, bouncing off her desk and on to the floor. She just stared at the articles Rhodey had sent her.

An unidentified man murdering drug lords and racketeers in the streets. A real-life vigilante getting revenge.

Natasha felt like she was going to be sick.

She should have tried harder to find him, before it came to this. She should have been there when Laura and the kids disappeared. She should have …

Her fists clenched as she stifled a sob. Her vision was getting blurry. Her thoughts were getting fuzzy.

She pulled herself to her feet, but she couldn’t think. She could barely see. She could feel the pain, starting at the top of her head and beginning to radiate everywhere throughout her body.

She shoved her hand in her pocket, but there was nothing there.

Her head spun. Carol had given her something. Carol had … something …

She stumbled to the door of her office, into the hall.

Carol. She needed Carol. She needed … she needed something.

She felt the world tilting. Something hard struck her body. Pain was everywhere. She put her hands up over her face and sobbed.

\--

She didn’t remember much. She remembered pain. And trying to call for Carol. She remembered not being able to move. She remembered being cold.

When she opened her eyes after what seemed like forever, her mouth felt dry, like she hadn’t had anything to drink in months. Her eyes felt sore, like she’d been swimming underwater with them open. Her whole body ached, like she’d been in hand to hand combat with Thanos himself.

A soft voice was talking to her. She couldn’t really understand the words, but a glass of water was held to her mouth and a straw inserted between her lips.

The water was cool and refreshing.

She fell back to sleep without remembering anything else.

She woke later to the feel of a hand in hers. She turned her head to see Carol asleep beside her. She breathed in, realizing she didn’t feel cold anymore. She watched her … soulmate? girlfriend? friend with a lot of benefits? — what were they even? — sleep, studying the way her blond curls fell over her face, the way her mouth was parted just so, the way she looked so strong but so beautiful even in sleep.

Natasha shifted over just a little, so she could lay her head on Carol’s shoulder, feeling the heat flood her body. She closed her eyes and let herself drift off again.

She woke the next time to Carol’s hand on her cheek, stroking her, and whispering her name. Her eyes fluttered open, and she took a couple seconds to focus.

“Hi there,” Carol said softly.

“You’re back.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be gone this long.”

Natasha shook her head. “It wasn’t you,” she said. “It was …”

“Clint,” Carol interrupted. “I know. Rhodey told me.”

Natasha’s eyes filled with tears at the mention of the man who she once considered her best friend. Carol’s thumb swiped under her eyes, brushing away the liquid that appeared there.

“I called for you,” Natasha said softly. “But I didn’t have the remote.”

“Rhodey found you,” Carol said. “He was worried when he couldn’t get hold of you. He got hold of Nebula. She found me.”

“I’m sorry,” Natasha whispered, and for the first time in a long time, she felt her cheeks grow red from embarrassment. It had been so long since she’d had an attack, she had thought they were gone forever.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Carol said. “I shouldn’t have been gone so long.”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” Carol said, then continued. “Do you think you’re feeling up to visitors? There’s someone else here who wants to see you.”

Natasha stared at her, disbelieving. “Someone wants to see me?” She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had actually stopped by to visit her.

“They do,” Carol said. She turned toward the door, dropping her hand from Natasha’s cheek to her hand. “Okay,” she called out.

The bedroom door open and a face Natasha hadn’t seen in ages appeared in front of her. She stared at him, almost like she was seeing a ghost.

“Steve,” she said quietly.

He smiled at her, a sad sort of smile. “I came to bring you a real dinner. I wasn’t sure how much real food you ate when Carol was gone.”

“If you count peanut butter and jelly,” Carol said, “then she’s fine.”

Steve cracked a small grin at that, but it faded just as fast. “Are you okay?” he asked Natasha. He looked worried, and Natasha knew Carol had told him what had happened.

“Now I am,” she said truthfully. With Carol’s help, she scooted to the edge of the bed and then stood up, her legs a little wobbly, but she managed to move toward Steve and flung her arms around him. He held her back, tightly.

“I’ve missed you,” he told her lowly. “I’m sorry for not being a better friend.”

“You’re here now.”

Once they had made sure Natasha was steady on her feet, the three of them made their way downstairs into Natasha’s office. The articles about Clint were still up on her computer, the files she had been working on still open. Carol gently pushed her into a chair on the side of the room and let Steve sit beside her before she went to put away everything that had been left half undone.

She knew Steve probably had questions about Clint, but she couldn’t deal with those right now. Instead, she smiled at her friend.

“So how is Brooklyn?” she asked. “Tell me everything.”


	6. Chapter Six

They were eating chocolate chip cookies Steve had made and listening to him tell them about the therapy group he was running in the basement of a YMCA — and Natasha was starting to feel a little bit calmer and a little bit happier, now that she was seated between two of the people she most cared about in the world — when their lives were upended once again.

The doorbell, that no one had rung in years, rang. The three of them jumped up, almost as one, racing to the security monitors.

Steve and Natasha stared at the image onscreen, mouths open, eyes disbelieving. It couldn’t be real.

Carol studied them curiously.

“Is this a recording?” Steve asked Natasha. She shook her head.

“Where did it come from?” he asked then.

Natasha was still staring at the monitor, trying to figure out how she could possibly be seeing what her eyes were telling her she was seeing. 

“The front door,” she finally said.

“Are you guys okay?” Carol asked.

Steve was the one who answered. “No,” he said. “That’s Scott Lang. He’s dead.”

“He doesn’t look dead.”

“I know.”

“Okay.” Carol shrugged. “Then let’s go invite him in.”

\--

Everything happened so fast after that, it was hard to even think about anything else. And everything Natasha had wanted to say to Carol, everything she had thought about during those weeks and months she had spent alone, took a backseat.

Scott Lang was alive, and if he was right, he could create time travel.

It seemed unreal, like something out of a science fiction movie, and Natasha had a hard time wrapping her head around it. But, as Steve reminded her, they had fought aliens on Fifth Avenue in New York City, watched a purple being snap away half of their friends, and her soulmate could split a rocket ship in half with her eyes. Was time travel really all that unbelievable a frontier?

Plus, no matter how much it still felt like a fantasy that wasn’t attainable, for the first time in five years, there was hope. Real hope. Something to look toward and be excited about. Which meant there was also a reason to bring everyone back together. All of the Avengers, together again. 

Tony, Bruce, Thor, Steve, Natasha. And Clint.

Natasha found him in Japan. She went alone, without Carol, finding him on a rainy street with a wild look in his eyes and blood on his hands.

She didn’t judge him — how could she, after what she had been doing when he had once found her so long ago? — just held out a hand.

“We think we can bring them back,” she said.

The idea was both simple yet terrifyingly complex. Six Infinity Stones, six places in time. Steve, Tony, Bruce and Scott were going to go get the Space Stone, the Mind Stone and the Time Stone from New York in 2012, Thor and Rocket were going to get the Reality Stone from Asgard in 2013, Nebula and Rhodey were after the Power Stone in Morag in 2014 and she, Clint and Carol were going to go get the Soul Stone from Vormir, also in 2014.

Natasha hadn’t expected Carol to want to come along — she had been in and out since the quest to figure out time travel began, doing her part to keep the universe threat-free now that Rocket and Nebula were back on Earth — but as Steve and Bruce and Rhodey all pointed out, not being in the same timeline could potentially wreak havoc on a soulmate bond. 

“Tony and Pepper are going to be apart,” Natasha had argued. 

“They’ve been together for a lot longer,” Steve had said. “Besides, they have Morgan. They can’t both go jumping through time.”

“But you said it’s going to be only a minute for people here.” She wasn’t sure why she was even still protesting. It’s not like she didn’t want to do this with Carol — she did — but she was tired of everyone looking at her like she was too fragile to be by herself for longer than a few minutes. What did they think she had been doing when all of them had disappeared for four-plus years?

“But it won’t be a minute for _you_ ,” Rhodey pointed out. “I thought you’d want her to come?”

“I do,” she said. She met Carol’s eyes, hoping she knew that.

“Then there isn’t a problem,” Rhodey said.

“And hey,” Carol said, shrugging her shoulders. “It could be fun.”

\--

They talked about it that night, lying in bed together, Carol’s arm around her and Natasha’s head on her chest.

They hadn’t had sex since the compound had filled with people again, even on the nights Carol was around. They really hadn’t done much at all, except at night when it was just the two of them alone together.

“I don’t have to come with you if you’d prefer to just go with Clint,” Carol said into Natasha’s hair. “I know how much you’ve missed him.”

“No,” Natasha said immediately. “This is a mission. It’s work. It’s not a bonding trip.”

“He was your partner for years before you ever met me.”

Natasha lifted her head and twisted around so she could see Carol better. “I want you to come,” she said. “I do. I feel better about this having you with us. It’s just …” She trailed off, not knowing how to explain so she wouldn’t hurt Carol’s feelings.

“You can tell me,” Carol said. There was no judgement at all in her voice; she looked like she was just waiting for whatever was coming.

“I guess I just wish that some of them would remember that I’m capable on my own.”

“You are capable on your own!”

“I know that.”

“But?” Carol prodded.

Natasha shrugged. “But sometimes it’s hard being one of the only ones who doesn’t have superpowers. Everyone wants to take care of you.”

“And then you end up with a soulmate who has extra superpowers,” Carol said.

“Yeah.” Natasha nodded. “Something like that.”

She felt Carol place her hand on the back of Natasha’s head, starting to card her fingers through her hair.

“I think they love you,” she finally said. “And they think you are just as capable as they are. And if they worry a little too much, it’s because they care. Not because they think you’re weak. But like I said, if you don’t want me to go …”

“No.” Natasha reached out and put a finger over Carol’s lips. “No,” she said again. “I mean it. I want you to go.”

“Good,” Carol said, around Natasha’s finger. “Because I want to do this with you. I want to help you save your friends.”

And then with a move Natasha didn’t expect, Carol flipped them over so Natasha was on her back and Carol was perched on top of her, sliding her hands up Natasha’s tank top and cupping her breasts in her warm hands.

“Now,” she said lowly, her voice washing over Natasha, instantly sending a flash of arousal through her body, “I’m going to get you naked, and then I want you to touch yourself for me until you come, and then we’re going to take it from there.”

\--

It took another week to completely figure out the details of time travel and how they were going to get the Infinity Stones. They worked on detailed plans, everything from how they were going to get in and get out without being spotted to how to make sure they didn’t completely mess up the future for the time they went back to.

The only real sticking point was the Soul Stone. No one really knew anything about Vormir. Everything was just myths and rumors, and a lot of those seemed to contradict each other. Carol offered to go first and check it out in their present time, but before she could, she was called away again for a few days to help another planet, and when she returned, it was too late.

It was cold when they arrived on the foreign planet, the air biting into Natasha’s hands and face, but it wasn’t just the weather that chilled her.

The words echoed like they were made for someone else.

“A sacrifice must be made. A soul for a soul.”

She knew, as the words hung in the air, that there was no choice. Clint had a family, one that was going to come back to him as soon as Tony could figure out a device powerful enough to hold all six stones. And Carol … well, Carol was a hero to universes far beyond theirs. She needed to be able to do that.

All Natasha had were former teams of Avengers who didn’t need her anymore and a soulmate who hadn’t exactly wanted her in the first place. Plus a ledger that, no matter how hard she tried, would always be dripping in red. Maybe this was the way to finally clear it out.

The walk to the top of the cliff seemed both like it took an eternity and a half of a second. None of them said a word as they walked, all of them contemplating what was about to happen.

Natasha thought about Clint saving her when he could have just as easily killed her. She thought about Steve, who had taken care of her so many times throughout the years, even before she had given him reason to trust her. She thought about Tony and Thor and Bruce, who had accepted her as part of the team, even when she wasn’t nearly as powerful as they were. She thought about Carol, who had stayed even when she so easily could have left and not looked back. And she thought about Sam and Wanda and Vision, about Fury and Maria, about Laura and the kids, and about everyone else who had disappeared, and her hands clenched into fists at her side and her chin lifted just a little.

There was no choice. She knew it down to her very core.

They finally stopped walking, a few yards from the edge of the cliff, turning toward each other almost instinctively. Clint took Natasha’s hands in his. She felt Carol’s arm brush against hers.

“I love you,” Clint told her. “You’ve been my best friend for a really long time. You’ve saved me so many times. My world would have been a lot less bright without you.”

Tears were flooding Natasha’s eyes. “I love you,” she said to Clint. “You saved me when no one else wanted you to. You took a chance on me when you didn’t have to. Without you, I wouldn’t even be here today.”

“Then you understand why I have to do this,” Clint said.

Natasha blinked. “Wait. What? No, I’m going to do it!”

He glared at her. “No, you’re not.”

“No, _you’re_ not. You have a family!”

“You have Carol.”

“Carol doesn’t need me.”

“ _She’s right there._ ”

“You both are idiots,” Carol said. 

Natasha turned to look at Carol, to take one last moment to really see her, but it was a moment too long. Clint’s hands slipped from hers while she was turned away, and then he was running, toward the edge of the cliff.

Natasha screamed, and began to run.

Carol got there first, landing in front of him. Clint raised a fist, leaping toward her, aiming for her face. She blocked him, grabbing his arm and twisting it behind him . He pulled out of her grip and tried to dart around her. She blocked him again.

Natasha stopped running and watched them, her mouth open slightly, fear and anxiety twisting in her gut. 

And then she realized.

They were distracted, Clint and Carol. They were concentrating on each other, Clint trying to die and Carol trying to stop him. 

She had wanted to say goodbye to Carol, to thank her for everything she had done for her, to tell her how much she had meant to her these last few years, but there wasn’t time. It was now or nothing. And Carol would understand, right? There was no other choice. She couldn’t let Clint go out like this.

She started to run, heading not toward Carol and Clint but directly toward the edge off to the side. Her eyes were focused on the sky in front of her.

She tried to block out the sounds of Carol and Clint. If she didn’t look at them, if she didn’t hear them, this would be so much easier. She had a job, and she needed to do it. There was no other choice.

The landscape in front of her changed. Something crossed her vision. A blur in red and blue.

She tried to dive around her, but Carol was too quick, too strong. Hands gripped her upper arms, squeezing her tight.

She heard a whispered “I’m sorry” before she was flying backward through the air. She landed with a loud crack, her body immediately flooded with pain.

The world blurred, but she could see something in red, back on the edge of the cliff.

She tried to scramble to her feet, but her ankle protested. She tried to call out, but it was too late. The figure in red turned around to face off the edge of the cliff, and then before Natasha could blink, she was gone.

Natasha screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

\--

She was underneath water, her mouth still open in a scream.

On instinct, she sat up, sputtering and coughing. She was in some kind of golden pool. Alone. The cliff was gone.

“No!” she screamed, and her voice seemed to echo around her, broken and forlorn. “Carol!”

She tried to get to her feet, but she had broken something — her ankle probably — when Carol had thrown her, and she fell backward into the water with a sob and a splash, her hands going up to cover her face.

And then there was a noise, and the sound of more splashing, and she felt hands grabbing her beneath her armpits and pulling her up.

Clint.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he was saying, and she wrapped her arms around him, clinging to him, shaking and crying.

“Do you have the soul stone?” He asked when she had calmed down a little. He wiped some of her hair out of her face.

She stared up at him, through her tears and her fear and her pain. “What?” she said, not understanding what he meant. Was she supposed to have gotten something?

“I have it.”

Natasha whirled around. Carol stood ten feet away from her and Clint, soaking wet from the water but more beautiful than Natasha could ever remember, a tiny yellow stone in the palm of her outstretched hand.

Natasha didn’t care about the pain anymore. She pulled out of Clint’s grasp, stumbling through the water toward Carol, reaching for her. Carol moved toward her, pulling her into her arms once they were close enough, and Natasha went willingly, grasping on to her as tightly as she could.

“Are you okay?” she heard Clint ask Carol.

“Yeah,” Carol said, holding Natasha against her.

Natasha finally looked up at her. “But how?” she said.

Carol leaned forward and kissed her, a quick peck on the lips. “I’ll tell you soon,” she said. “We need to get home.” She looked at Clint. “Can you carry her, to a dry spot? We need to get her ankle looked at.”

“Sure thing,” Clint said with a grin, and he scooped her up before she could protest. Normally, Natasha would have made a sarcastic comment, but there was none inside her to make. All she could do was feel relief flood through her body. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Clint’s shoulder.

She was okay. Clint was okay. Carol was okay. And their friends were coming home.

\--

It took a few seconds for all of them to look around at each other, everyone counting faces to make sure everybody else came back. Natasha felt a flood of relief once she realized everyone was there, so much so that she nearly forgot about the pain in her ankle or that Clint was still carrying her in his arms.

That is, until Tony’s eyes landed on them.

“What happened?” he asked, worry lacing his voice as he pointed over to her.

“Carol broke Natasha’s ankle,” Clint said immediately, but at Carol’s dirty look, he added. “Not intentionally. She was saving her from diving off a cliff to her death.”

“What?” Steve said. He looked horrified.

Carol spoke up. “Steve, why don’t you take her to the infirmary? She can tell you along the way.”

Natasha looked over at her in confusion. Carol wasn’t taking her? But Steve had already crossed the floor, taking her from Clint and cradling her in his arms like he was going to carry her across a threshold.

Carol smiled at her, like she knew what Natasha was thinking. “I just need to do something,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Natasha nodded, then turned to Steve. “Do what you have to do, Soldier,” she said, even if part of her wanted to insist she could walk on her own — but that was a lie and she knew they all knew it. Steve chuckled gently as he carried her away from the others.

The walk to the infirmary took them to the other side of the compound. Tony had hired a doctor just in case something went wrong; he just hadn’t told the doctor what they were really doing.

Steve walked slow, so as not to jostle her ankle. As they headed down the halls, she told him what happened.

“We couldn’t just take it,” she said. “The guardian of the stone, he said we needed to make a sacrifice. The thing most important to us.”

“Like a human sacrifice?” Steve’s grip tightened on her before he realized what he was doing, but then he loosened his hold back up.

“I was going to do it,” Natasha admitted to him. “I couldn’t let Clint do it. Or Carol. The world needs her. His family needs him.”

“Oh, Nat.” He sounded disappointed she would even think that. She kept talking before he could say more.

“But when I was running to the edge, Carol got in the way. And she practically threw me back to the other side. That’s when I landed wrong. And then she jumped.”

“Carol jumped?”

“Yes,” Natasha said. “But she’s still here.”

“She is strong,” Steve mused. “Maybe she just survived.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

\--

Natasha’s ankle wasn’t broken. Just very bruised and sprained. The doctor wrapped it for her, told her to stay off it and to use ice for the pain. He also gave her a set of crutches and a bottle of pills that she tucked in her pocket with no plans to use. She had survived worse.

She hobbled back through the compound with Steve as he told her what happened on his end of the time travel adventure.

“You saw us eleven years ago,” she mused. “Wow.”

“We’ve all come a long way, haven’t we?”

She smiled, remembering back to the day she met Steve on top of the hellicarrier — him, a man out of time, and her, a former assassin who was still convinced she didn’t need people and would never need friends. “Yeah,” she said. “We have.”

He stopped walking suddenly, and she stopped beside him.

“What?” she asked, worried he was going to tell her something she didn’t want to hear.

He seemed to be studying her for a long minute before he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“I’m sorry for not being a good friend,” he said. “These last few years.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t expected that. She’d thought the apology when he had found her with Carol before Scott showed up would be the last they ever discussed it. She shook her head. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I know how hard losing Bucky was on you.”

“That doesn’t mean I should have taken it out on you.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did,” he said. “And I’m sorry.” 

He moved toward her, and she let her crutches fall to the ground so she could wrap her arms around him. He hugged her tightly, his arms strong and safe around her.

“If you had gone over that cliff,” he whispered into her ear, “and I could never tell you what you’ve meant to me, I would never have forgiven myself.”

Something burned in Natasha’s chest at his words. She pressed herself tighter to him still.

“I love you, Steve,” she told him.

“I love you, too, Nat,” he said. “And I’m so happy you found Carol.”

“I’m happy you’re getting Bucky back.”

“That makes two of us.”

They pulled apart, and Steve picked up her crutches for her, handing them back to her.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They found everyone else, apart from Carol, gathered around the six Infinity Stones. They were spread out and sparkling on a table, like they were huge decorative pieces for someone’s treasured necklace.

“Where’s Carol?” Natasha asked as she and Steve stepped up to the table, but before anyone could answer, footsteps sounded behind them. Carol walked up to them without a word and took the spot beside Natasha. Natasha wanted to ask her where she had been, but Bruce began talking, stealing the moment. Instead, Natasha found Carol’s fingers and squeezed them with her own, then forced herself to focus on Bruce, who was gesturing to the stones.

“We’re going to build a glove that can hold them,” Bruce said. “Like the one Thanos had. And then we just need to figure out who can best wear it to Snap everyone back.”

“I nominate the Hulk,” Scott spoke up.

“Seconded,” Clint said.

But Tony was looking at Carol. “Carol can do it,” he said. “Her powers are from an Infinity Stone. It should be least problematic for her.”

Everyone’s head swiveled to look at Carol, but she stared down at the stones, a strange expression on her face.

She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said.

“You can’t?” Thor’s eyes narrowed as he glared at her. “I thought you were all about showing us how much better than us you are?”

Carol didn’t reply to that, just kept gazing down at the stones for a long time. Finally, she lifted her head and directed her attention to Natasha.

“I can’t,” she repeated, her voice loud enough to carry but her eyes never leaving Natasha’s. “I don’t have powers anymore. I’m a hundred percent human.”

Natasha stared at her. What was Carol talking about?

“What?” Tony said. “Did I miss something?”

And then Natasha understood. Carol went over the cliff. Carol sacrificed something for the Soul Stone. Not her physical life — she couldn’t. She couldn’t be killed when she had her powers. But she could give up her immortal life. She could give up her powers.

Carol gave up her powers.

Natasha felt her mouth fall open. The world was tilting.

Carol didn’t have powers anymore.

Carol gave up her powers.

Carol was human. A normal human. A regular, normal human.

Natasha knew the others were figuring it out, too. She could hear the murmurs behind her. 

“You sacrificed your powers.” It was Clint who finally said it.

Carol still didn’t stop looking at Natasha, but she nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I sacrificed my powers.”

\--

Carol and Natasha managed to sneak away while the others were invested in discussing Bruce wearing the glove and Carol giving up her powers.

They headed to the kitchen, which somehow felt fitting, Carol’s arm around Natasha’s waist, helping her walk.

Natasha’s mind hadn’t stopped spinning. Everything since they had all found themselves in the golden lake suddenly made sense. Why Carol had disappeared, why she’d had Steve carry her, why she’d had Clint carry her in Vormir.

Carol helped her sit at the kitchen table. She sat down beside her. They were both silent. Carol looked nervous yet defiant.

Natasha scanned over her, searching to see if she somehow looked any different as a normal human, but she didn’t. She had changed into jeans and a tank top, and to Natasha, she still looked like the same woman she had spent the last five years with — working with, training with, falling in love with.

_Falling in love with._

Her heart suddenly in her throat, Natasha forced herself to speak. “You gave up your powers.”

Carol nodded. “I wasn’t going to let either of you two idiots throw yourselves off a cliff.”

“But you gave up your powers.”

“Yes. I did.”

“But you love them.” Natasha bit her lip. “I know you do. I’ve seen how you look when you talk about the people you help, about the places you save. You’re the hero across the galaxy. How can you give that up? All those people … I’m not ….” Natasha paused. She could see Carol starting to frown, but she plunged on anyway. “I’m not worth all that. I should have just died.”

“No!” Carol said sharply. “No.”

“But how many people will die now that you gave up your powers? Carol, that isn’t right!” Natasha was thinking hard. They still had Pym particles. Maybe when this was over … “If we return the Soul Stone, maybe we can get them back. Or we can go back and stop ourselves. Or …”

“Natasha.” Carol put a hand over hers. Natasha let the rest of what she wanted to say hang unspoken in the air. “I made my choice.”

“You can’t let people die to save me, though,” Natasha said. She shook her head. “I have so much red in my ledger already.”

“Nothing I did reflects on you,” Carol said.

“Yes, it does!” Natasha grabbed her hands. “Can’t you see? You chose to give up your powers and risk thousands of lives just so I wouldn’t die! That makes it on me!”

“It doesn’t make anything on you,” Carol said. “And thousands aren’t going to die. We have the stones. We’re going to reverse the Snap. People are going to return, in all universes. There will be other heroes. A lot of them. The world doesn’t need me anymore.”

“That’s not true …”

Carol moved her finger to Natasha’s lips. “But you do,” she said. “You need me. And I need you.”

“Carol …”

“I knew what I was doing when I gave them up. It wasn’t a rash decision, nor one that I regret. I love being a hero, but I can still be a hero. You are. You don’t have powers, but you are one of the strongest, bravest, most heroic people I know.”

“Carol …”

“And I’m tired of always having a reason to leave you. I’m tired of being galaxies away. I want to be here, with you, all the time.” Carol took in a deep breath. “I love you, Natasha Romanoff.”

Natasha’s eyes widened. They had been soulmates for five years now, but neither one of them had ever said the words. But as Carol said them, Natasha knew it was time. It had been time for a while, but she had just been so afraid to say it.

She smiled at Carol, this time her eyes filling with happy tears. “I love you, too, Carol Danvers. I’m still mad at you, though.”

“I’m okay with that,” Carol said, and then she kissed her. 

It wasn’t the longest kiss they’d ever shared or the most heated or the gentlest or the roughest, but it was the best, and as they held each other, showing their love to the other, Natasha felt it. Something she had never felt before, forming between her and Carol, tying them together in a way nothing else ever had. Like a connection forming between the two of them. 

Like a bond.

They finally pulled apart, smiles on both their faces.

“Well,” Natasha said. “We should probably get back to the others. See if they’ve figured out who can wear the glove. We’ve got some friends who are going to show up soon, and I want you to meet them.”

Carol’s grin got even wider, if that was possible. 

“I can’t wait.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art Masterpost for A Soul And A Soul by flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25507495) by [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva), [velociraptorerin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/velociraptorerin/pseuds/velociraptorerin)




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